


In Earendil’s Light

by Gloromeien



Series: In Earendil's Light Trilogy [1]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 16:32:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 48,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10857834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gloromeien/pseuds/Gloromeien
Summary: Just as tragedy strikes the Last Homely House, and old foe proposes an unusual alliance.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.   
> Author’s Note: Wanted to write something elven and epic, this is my shot. I don’t know if this can be considered AU… as it *does* follow the timeline established by Tolkien, it just ‘fills in’ some scenes he may have ‘left out’… *right*. My story, sticking, etc. Hope you enjoy!!  
> Feedback: Longed for, as always.   
> Dedication: For beautiful Alexias and golden Lysis, for wise Epaminondas and rash Pelopidas. I bow to the Shrine of Iolaus, in the wake of the Sacred Band, and offer up to them this proto-Platonic tale of warrior love. Elf-warrior, that is.

Prologue 

Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 139

The argent gauze of Earendil’s light shroud the Last Homely House of Imladris, as if his fairest ship of songs, the Foam-flower, had herself sailed through the halls, stables, and talans, blessing each with an unearthly glow. 

On this star-kissed night, the peerless elf Glorfindel, sung in his previous life as slayer of the mighty Balrog and beloved of Tuor’s court at Gondolin, crept along the gabled pathways, beneath the watchful shrines to warriors passed or valiantly fallen. Fingon, Gil-galad, Turgon his kinsman… each had brought honor to the Noldor, each had railed against the Shadow with every breath of their might. Glorfindel himself had returned to this Middle-Earth from the waiting Halls of Mandos, such was his charge to Tuor and his kin. 

As he lurched up the last of the outer steps, he came to a vital halt, resting a gored shoulder against the rippled folds of Feanor’s pewter robes, panting ferociously. The sweat of his flushed brow mingled with orc’s blood, snaking through the sodden gold wisps that framed his sallow face and staining them a cinder gray. He coughed, once, thickly, and spat a copious gob of smoke-black saliva behind him. The motion caused his vision to swim, swoon, and he unceremoniously crashed to his knees. 

Some time later, a brazing cry ripped through the moon-hushed night, roused him. 

Though still battle-weary, Glorfindel leapt up to his feet and flew into the Homely House. He burst through the doors to the Hall of Healing, sword drawn, in time to catch the ebullient gray eyes of his Lord and great friend, Elrond Half-Elven. 

“My Lord,” Glorfindel rasped, the sprint itself almost besting him. “What trouble?” 

“None, brave Glorfindel,” Elrond beamed at him, before notice of his wounds caused his smile to fade. “You’re injured. Your leg… how can you walk?”

“Well enough,” Glorfindel snipped, the proof in his brash strides into the Hall. “Did you not hear your Lady cry? Sharp as a skinned lamb, my Lord.” 

“Aye, I heard.” Elrond’s smirk returned, along with a comely bashfulness. “You’ve been gone some five years, my friend. There is much news. Such news...” With no regard to his grimed appearance, Elrond fiercely gripped his guard-captain by the shoulders, before crushing him into an ecstatic hug. 

Once released, Glorfindel fought not to recoil, such was his shock at the Half-Elf’s gesture. 

Elrond, with a baleful laugh, struggled to explain: “A miracle, Glorfindel, of such elfkind has never witnessed before!! Elbereth has twice-blessed this House of Imladris… twin sons my heart and I have begotten, this very night, under Earendil’s light!!” 

“*Twin* elflings begotten of a twin,” Glorfindel whispered, the import of the moment stifling every twinge, every ache. “And sons, no less. Heirs.” 

“Come,” Elrond near-commanded him. “I would see them in your fine company, my captain returned.” 

“You have not seen them?” Glorfindel inquired, still felled by the news, as they swept into the surgery. 

“Erestor forbade me enter,” Elrond, in his delight, almost chuckled, where once he would most certainly scorn. “My presence was… a hindrance, as most generously described.” 

At this, Glorfindel joined in his mirth, until the sight of two pearl-drop babes slumbering in a willow-bow cradle was before their wondering eyes. Their exhausted mother was tucked into a nearby cot, waiting her husband’s tender escort to their bedchamber. 

“They are dark, as their father,” Glorfindel remarked, as Elrond was presently beyond the power of speech. “Yet their skin is fair as their mother’s and their eyes of her mithril hue.”

“They are my treasures,” the Lord barely spoke, overcome. With trembling yet resolute fingers, he whisked the moisture from his eyes and touched each hot brow with his dampened fingers. “I bless you Elrohir, elf-knight, child of Eru and Prince of Imladris, by the light of the Valar above. I bless you…” Elrond stopped, stunned at himself. “By Elbereth, Glorfindel. We’d not ever quarreled… There was no other name.”

Glorfindel pondered this, inwardly rallying his slowly-clouding mind. Elrond himself seemed at a loss without Celebrian’s counsel. 

“What of… Elladan?” the guard-captain suggested. “Half elf. Half man.”

“But this may cause him to chose Middle-Earth over Valinor, as my brother,” Elrond objected. “The choice made before the first day of his eternal life has passed, in being so named. What say you?” 

“I say you grieve your brother still, Elrond,” Glorfindel counseled cautiously. “As such I would not name the babe for him. But your sons may indeed chose the same path as he. The choice remains their own, now, in the future, at the world’s end… Naming this second son ‘Elladan’ does indeed imbue his path with the scent of destiny, but it is a glorious fate for him, to fight alongside his brother the elf-knight, to again unite the worlds of Elf and Men against the Shadow. One son named for bravery, the other for unity. Names befitting the sons of a great warrior and wise ruler, Elrond.” 

“Well reasoned, my dear friend,” Elrond complimented him. “We’ll make a diplomat of you yet.” With a wry smile, the Lord of Imladris again moved to consecrate his son’s birth. “I bless you Elladan, elf and man united, child of Eru and Prince of Imladris, by the light of the Valar above.”

After the ritual blessings, both Eldar regarded the cherubic new elflings for a long, near-reverent moment. Unable to resist the lure of the first new elves born to the Noldor since the second age, Glorfindel reached down into the cradle, stroking a tender finger up the pointed tip and over the leaf-shaped rim of Elladan’s ear. The newborn elf batted open his eyes, taking his first sight of the daunting world. 

“Greetings, pen-neth,” Glorfindel cooed. “I am your guardian, and tutor.” Elrond, breathlessly touched, quietly scooped up his son and handed him to the blonde elf, who was only too eager to take him up. The proud father soon gathered up the other twin, similarly stroking his little ear, a sensitive point for elfkind and a sign of deep affection. 

As Glorfindel bent to kiss the baby’s ripe cheeks in welcome, a trickle of blood from his neck wound dripped onto Elladan’s tiny lips. The babe snortled sweetly and lapped away the wetness with a lazy pink tongue, while the captain stared down in horror. Glorfindel froze, afraid he had cursed the child. 

“He has the taste of it now,” Elrond decreed, resting a calming hand on Glorfindel’s shoulder. “Warriors both, then.” With a sigh of utter contentment, Elrond gestured them towards another ward, to not further disturb Celebrian. “Come, I will brew a broth with the afterbirth and tend to your wounds. There is no more potent elixir in all of Middle Earth, and a peerless remedy for nausea, than a boiled placenta.” 

Glorfindel followed willingly, knowing better than to cross Elrond on this of any day, yet silently sought young Elladan’s sympathy for the foul soup he would soon ingest in the name of friendship. 

The elfling beamed brilliantly up at him, his first of many smiles. 

* * *

Part One

Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 188

Studiously ignoring his brother’s latest harrumph, Elladan drew the tight string of his bow and anchored the arrow by his right incisor. A hawk-eye locked on the target beyond, he adjusted his stance with minuscule, almost imperceptible contractions of his taut muscles. The slightness of their firm bellies belied the unwavering control and the rapt agility his still-developing form had learnt; soon, with some refinement, to be mastered. His senses keen as a dagger’s edge, his arrow-tip traced Lindir’s progress through the nearby meadow, until the innocent house-master swept into a thicket of oarberry briars, the most common nesting-ground for red-feathered hollets. 

With the barest hint of a smirk, Elladan let fly. The resulting swarm of squawking hollets thoroughly ruffled Lindir’s feathers, enough to send the startled elf scurrying beneath the tree cover. Behind him, Elrohir’s subsequent fit of hysterical giggles caused him to unceremoniously roll off his stump-perch and into the moss bed below, no doubt staining his new copper tunic. As he deftly sheathed his bow alongside his rawhide quiver, Elladan allowed himself a glint of satisfaction. 

Two for one. 

“By the Valar, Elladan!” his brother pouted testily. “Nena completed the embroidery this very morning!”

“Noting, if I am not mistaken,” Elladan smartly pointed-out. “That the garment should be saved for the revels of our begetting, in a fortnight.” 

“Aye,” Elrohir admitted, unable to remain cross with his twin for more than a brief moment. Elladan already stood above him, offering his hand. The older twin snorted, ashamed of his vanity, then took it gladly. 

“It does not become you to preen, gwanur,” Elladan remarked softly. “We are Sons of Elrond. Our titles are ample adornment, to those who would woo us.” 

“Angleien is not a wit impressed by titles,” the taciturn suitor griped. 

“Angleien is the daughter of the stable-keep,” Elladan noted sensibly. “Who will flirt until she’s been thoroughly kissed, and once so will gladly be dismissed when the next swollen-faced temptation catches your eye. She’s too shrewd to be deceived by your weak troths of undying affection.”

“She’s a trifle,” his twin confessed. “But an alluring one.” Elrohir paused a moment, considering his brother’s resigned features, then added: “Come with me to the village. You seldom frequent the ale-halls and will be unfamiliar with their currency when we grow to questing age.” 

“I am well acquainted with the ale houses,” Elladan mused. “And care little for trifles such as Angleien… or Kamarest, or Lilir, or Ceridawen, or whichother maid you abandon me to.” 

“Am I so thoughtless?” Elrohir grinned warmly. 

“Remarkably often, gwanur,” the prince grunted ruefully, then allowed himself to again be distracted by the targets. “But if you would court their favors, best be off. Glorfindel has wagered a week’s stable-duty he will best me, and will soon come down for the competition. Unless you prefer to court his displeasure…” 

Elrohir immediately dismissed this warning in favor of gleaning on the timber in which it was uttered: tremulous, affectionate… almost unspeakably tender. His twin often spoke thusly of their tutor, shrouding his praise, his fondness with a rigid formality Glorfindel himself rarely expressed in his instruction to them. 

“I doubt either of us could be so *courted* by the fair Glorfindel,” Elrohir replied, his lip-ends curling despite themselves. 

“Aye,” Elladan agreed, grown pensive. “He alone among our elders seems to recall the time before their majority… and he has lived two lifetimes!” This last was uttered with such unabashed awe, Elrohir could not restrain himself from a peal of mad giggles. 

Those hawk-eyes set him in their sights, their stare razing. 

Elrohir swallowed hard. He tempered his response to his brother’s obvious fragility, not wanting to put him off such fearless romantic adventuring among the elders at Imladris. Indeed, for this undisclosed affection, he held his younger brother in considerable esteem. No giddy, willing maids to tame his newly flaming urges, but a warrior and a diplomat doubly learned in the ways of their immortal life. Ada himself had, in one of his more lubricated moments, confessed to Elrohir that Glorfindel and Elladan were destined for each other, though further questioning had sobered him sufficiently to stop his loosened tongue. 

Yet Elrohir wondered how conscious Elladan himself was of his own heart’s yearnings, and wisely chose to demure. 

“I will be at Barrowman’s Close, then, should he forget you,” Elrohir informed him. 

“Forget me?” Elladan pounced, his eyes hollowed. “Why should he forget me?! He himself set the wager at last night’s evensong.” 

“Aiya, gwanur, I meant no disrespect!” Elrohir groaned, but could not dismiss a knowing smirk. “He will come presently. You will spar. I wish you luck, for he will not be lightly bested, especially for a week’s stable chores.” The older twin patted his brother sweetly on the cheek, then moved to make his retreat. “But do not be too strong with him, else he will chafe. Go gently, and be sure…”

/…and even his guarded nature could not long resist you, nin bellas./ 

As he watched Elrohir go, his stomach prickled, swam. He collapsed onto the tree stump, somber, yet restless as well. Much as he adored his wiles, the elder twin often hit far too close to his heart, knowing implicitly what matters Elladan must thoroughly muse-over and which he must dismiss for fear of intemperance. In truth, Elladan cared little for maids or their glossy kisses, but wished his nature allowed him to gallivant the landscape of coyness and flirtation as freely as Elrohir. The experience alone would better serve his future lovers, whose ministrations Elladan anticipated with longing equal, he was sure, to his genial brother’s. 

With a pregnant sigh, he set these weighty thoughts aside and searched the meadow for signs of Glorfindel. The tips of Arien’s autumn rays almost brushed the length of the horizon, but his tutor was nowhere to be seen. The wager had been set long before the nightly revels; regardless, Glorfindel had never before broken a promise to him. If anything, Elladan was prone to tardiness, especially where diplomacy lessons were concerned… 

Elladan shut his eyes a long moment, seeking to silence his dizzy mind. If he waited on any other but Glorfindel, he would have gone to search for him by now. His guardian, however, lately overwhelmed and baffled him in equal measure. It had grown increasingly difficult for Elladan to keep counsel in his esteemed presence, such was his regard for his tutor. At times, he found himself so overswept by Glorfindel’s familiar manner, that the sparest compliment would send him reeling. Elladan was painfully aware of the new, viscerally physical effects the Noldor’s gentility sometimes produced in him, as he was of the ambiguous, heated, yet potent dreams he suffered. Still, he could not long keep himself from Glorfindel’s fine company, nor sought to with any forceful strength of resolve. He secretly feared that once his majority was reached, in little more than a year’s time, he would no longer be able to hide these feelings from anyone, Glorfindel included, and would thus be thoroughly shamed by them, or ordered to restrain them, or banished from Imladris, or worse… 

Scorned and avoided by the guardian himself. 

Elladan sunk down onto the moss beds, gathered his legs to his chest. He would remain until sunset, then would seek him out. His apologies would be warmer consolation than his inevitable irritation in defeat.

* * * 

“Afterbirth!!” Erestor exclaimed, his prim face drained entirely of color. 

“Aye, a broth of it,” Glorfindel replied, somewhat leery of uncovering the cause of his dismay.

“A broth, or a tonic?” the Loremaster attempted to calmly inquire.

“A broth, if I recall,” the blonde elf elaborated. “With oarberries and brine. Ah, and tree sap.”

“Tree sap,” Erestor demanded in earnest. “Are you certain?”

“Forty-nine years have passed, but, aye, Erestor, I am certain!!” Glorfindel growled. “What of it? It was merely to sweeten –“

“Perhaps to your swordsman’s ear a pinch of syrup has little import, Glorfindel…” Erestor sighed, unable to continue on. He shuffled dully over to the requisite bookshelf and blindly selected a volume, knowing without having to properly check the answers inscribed there. The guard-captain, however, would require proof, as would Elrond, eventually. Glorfindel observed his purposeful paging out of the corner of his eye, tense and unrepentantly anxious. “How long have you felt… drawn to him?” 

“All his life, Erestor, as have you.”

“Indeed, I have, meldir,” Erestor admitted soothingly. “But not as you are.”

“Aye,” Glorfindel conceded, then, with a dry swallow, resolved to tell the toll of it. “I have always felt a particular tenderness for him. When he was but an elfling… I would often have cause to hold him, rather than his brother, to coddle...” The blonde Noldor recalled many a thunderous night, when a white streak of satin would patter across his chamber floor and burrow into his bed. Into his arms, for comfort. “He grew into such an eager student…” The most able he had ever taught. The most graceful… “I am his guardian!! I would never- “

“I understand well, mellon-nin,” Erestor reminded him. “But go on.”

“As he approaches his majority…” Glorfindel shut his eyes, as if unwilling to bear witness to his own torment. “My affections have become more… personal, in nature. He… entrances me. His beauty… his sweet temper…” He halts himself, his cheeks burning crimson. “At lessons, I can dismiss this… but I am shamed, Erestor, at night. In private… it shames me.” 

Erestor regarded his friend with clenched heart. /Curse you, Elrond, for your carelessness./ 

Cautiously, he approached the trembling elf and lay his hands onto the back of his neck, thumbs stroking the length of his ears. To see one of such valor so beaten by self-beratement, so sickened with unwanted longing, fired Erestor’s will to guide him through the unbidden agony of this accidental binding. The solution, however, would not be pleasing.

“There is little wonder you are so afflicted, maltaren-nin,” Erestor explained, with as much gentility as he possessed. “These desires are a natural expression of your…You are bound to him.”

Glorfindel’s head flew up; his eyes wide, near-weeping. 

“Bound?! No…”

“I wish it were not so,” the Loremaster continued mournfully. “But I have brewed the potion myself, at least once a year for every year since my majority… the blood of another, diluted, sweetened by tree sap…the draught of betrothal. Of binding.” Erestor paused a moment, his anger overtaking him. “Elrond should have known better. *Afterbirth*!! The very forge of the elfling’s spirit he fed you!!”

“He explained it was a potent remedy…” Glorfindel attempted dully. 

“Aye, if the young one had not already drunk your blood!!” Erestor almost spat, such was his frustration. “The very basics of the binding ceremony… forgive me, meldir, I forget myself.”

“You do me great service, Erestor,” Glorfindel dismissed his apologies. “You sing of the regret I must not allow myself.” The blond elf grew quiet a moment, so quiet Erestor’s worry amplified considerably. “Tell me, Loremaster… will I fade?” 

Strangely, Erestor almost smiled. 

“You need not,” he related the less-ill news. “You are already bound to him. Unless he – Elbereth forbid it – is killed in battle, you should remain in fair health, your own flint-fire nature and all things considered.” 

“Spare me the ridicule, if you will, mellon-nin,” Glorfindel whispered. 

“Aye,” Erestor nodded solemnly. “However, as he reaches his majority, your affections will deepen. Lust will emerge, vicious, consuming. It could very well drive you mad, if unrequited.” 

“But this is the heart of the matter,” Glorfindel insisted, suddenly animated. “He has not evidenced any similar affections for me. He seems… oddly unaffected, at times, by elf or maid. I am held in some regard, of course, as his tutor, but… my greatest desire for him, Erestor, is freedom. The freedom to chose the mate of his heart.” 

Erestor absorbed this without comment for some time. At last, he ventured: “I do not doubt the nobility of your intent, mellon-nin. But this freedom you speak of for Elladan does not come without a price.” 

“I will pay any price,” Glorfindel stated firmly, as if a soldier awaiting orders. 

“Much as I myself will miss your company,” Erestor began. “You must leave Imladris, for long periods of time. The twins will begin to adventure on their own soon enough, only when they are gone may you return. I caution you not to spend more than a month at a time in their company, and this every decade or so, else the emotions you speak so intently of will become… ferocious. Elrond should have no trouble finding some matter of diplomacy worthy of your attention. If not, simply remind him what caused this trouble to begin with… Time enough will tell if Elladan is felled by a similar binding to you. The only trouble will come if he does marry, and is bound to another.”

“I will fade, then, from grief,” Glorfindel guessed easily. “My flame knows well enough the source of its power, it flickers at… at the mere thought of…”

Erestor exhaled slowly, rested his brow against his dear friend’s. 

“Rest awhile, meldir,” Erestor softly advised him. “I will speak with Elrond on your behalf.” 

Just as Elladan rounded the corner, in search of his tardy teacher, Erestor comforted the gentle Noldor with a tender, utterly platonic kiss.

By the time the Loremaster turned away, the room was empty…

 

End of Part One

 

A/N on elvish translations:

/Ada/ = Father  
/Nena/ = Mother  
/Gwanur/ = Brother  
/Meldir/ = Friend  
/Mellon-nin/ = My friend  
/Maltaren-nin/ = My golden one  
/nin bellas/ = my strength


	2. Near-Death

Part Two

Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 2,509

As he hurried through the ominous brimstone gables outside the armory, Glorfindel paused a brief moment to survey the much-altered landscape of Imladris. Mighty Earendil loomed above, his sallow beams trickling down as tears from the heavens to bemoan the trying times fallen upon his kin. The captain bowed somberly before the hungry moon, a tattered pearl in a midnight turned scarlet by the raging fires in the valley villages below. 

The Lady Celebrian was beloved by all. Her people would have their vengeance, if Elrond dared not. 

Though he had often met up with his Imladrian comrades elsewhere along his travels, often at White Council meetings in Lothlorien, he had not set foot in the Last Homely House for over two thousand years. With telltale severity, Glorfindel regretted that such a calamity as the gentle Celebrian’s abduction and near-fatal rescue by her valiant twins returned him to his now-intemperate home. A chill had descended on Rivendell such that he had never witnessed before. The tree-bows drooped over the shadowed eaves, lifeless yet seeming to tremble, the flowers gathered their petals in as if to swallow themselves whole; even the ardent flow of the Bruinen stilled to a dull trickle. Imladris faded with its Lady, nature her willing servant, slave to her whims. 

As, he reflected, was her husband in his prolonged hermitage at her bedside. 

Reluctant to linger too long, Glorfindel swooped up the winding staircase to the Lord’s study, a cloister beneath the eastern peak of the Hall of Fire. Erestor had ostensibly lured Elrond up to this safe-haven on the charge that Arwen need change her mother’s bed-clothes, her father’s presence at such times like a taunt to his wife’s continued desolation. That Elrond was fed this deception without protest spoke volumes of his state of mind. 

Before the vault-like hearthstone doors, he discovered the dutiful Loremaster. 

“Mae govannen, mellon-nin,” Glorfindel sung out, before enveloping Erestor in his crushing arms. 

“Glorfindel!” Erestor cried despite himself, his relief at the guard-captain’s presence almost palpable. The darkling elf returned the embrace with equal fervor; finally someone steady to lean on, after so many months of shouldering a household’s grief. “He has been asking for you, meldir. For weeks, he has begged nothing but your return, your guidance.” Erestor sighed heavily, then rested their foreheads together. “As, I confess, have I…” 

“How fares my Lady?” Glorfindel quickly inquired, eager for any news that might aid his cause before Elrond. 

Erestor shut his eyes, then silently retreated from the comfort of his friend’s arms. He could not bring himself to raise his head, such was the truth of the matter’s hold on him. The Loremaster had not yet admitted, even to himself, the defeat of his healing powers by the clinging remnants of Shadow over Celebrian’s blithe spirit. 

“She is fading,” he somberly explained. “Only the light of Valinor can spare her an eternity in Mandos. She must sail West. She must… depart before winter, else she will…” 

“But Elrond’s temperance, his wisdom is vital to our people’s survival,” Glorfindel protested vainly. “He cannot leave us!”

“He will not,” Erestor confirmed gravely. 

Glorfindel nodded, once, and sighed as well. /Little wonder the valley grieves for him./ 

“And the children?” he asked dully. 

At this, the Loremaster almost allowed himself a smile. “They are children no longer, meldir. Only his injuries keep Elrohir from this meeting, he sits on the Council with his father. Arwen is my storekeeper and scribe; Elladan is in the village as we speak, commanding patrols and keeping peace. He heads our defenses, though he cannot be named captain until you renounce the title.” Erestor examined his friend’s tense features, but found no sign of trouble at Elladan’s naming. 

“He is… under my command?” the captain queried, with mounting, yet invisible, trepidation. 

“Elladan’s mettle is of his own making,” Erestor smirked to himself. “He will be charged by none save Elrond, and even then… as you, no doubt, will soon enough discover.” On this lighter note, he gestured towards the doors. “Will you lead this charge, mellon-nin?”

“With…-” Glorfindel bit back the word ‘pleasure’, since the task before them would prove anything but pleasurable and perhaps nothing barely resembling successful. 

They entered without warning. 

The Lord of Imladris was not to be found at his desk, but gathered into the window seat, his slate gray robes sloppily tucked under him, his tangled braids askew. He resembled, Glorfindel noted almost mirthfully, the twins in their late infancy, disregarding their lessons with studied pouts, keeping relentless vigil at the library windows for their father’s return from Lorien, or Isengard, or simply the village. /Would that Elrond be preoccupied by such trifles now./ 

“I bring word, my Lord, from afar,” he announced himself without ceremony. 

Elrond turned, as a ghost might turn, to face him. 

“Ah, Glorfindel,” he muttered blankly, as if he’d spoken to the guard-captain but minutes before. “What news?” 

“From Greenwood the Great, my Lord Elrond,” Glorfindel began, unsure if the half-elf was even listening, such was his regard for the light of his father’s star. “Now called the Mirkwood, plagued by Shadow as no other land in Arda. The forest is a blight on the land, a cancer that consumes even the fairest soul.”

“What care I for Thranduil’s lair?” Elrond mused, as if sedated. 

Glorfindel shot a dark glance at Erestor, weary of continuing when Elrond was so bereft, so listless. The Loremaster urged him on. 

“I have witnessed their defenses firsthand,” Glorfindel explained. “They will not hold another thousand year, without support. The Greenwood will fall to Shadow, and with it the Sindar tribe.” The golden elf moved steadily forward, closing bodily in as his argument encroached upon his morose Lord. “It has begun here as well, in Rivendell. If the villagers are not tempered… they’ll soon welcome Sauron into their hearts. Thus it began, in Mirkwood. The race of men are weak…” 

“And what must I do to preserve the fiendish race of *men*?!” Elrond seethed, snapping his head around quick as a whip. “Come, Glorfindel, ply me with your words, entreat Thranduil’s favor in this time of my weakness and come to distract me from my purpose with his inflated schemes…”

“Be silent, Elrond!” Erestor reproached him in a tone Glorfindel never thought possible from one so docile. “You will hear reason, else I will ship her off at dawn’s first light. Do you hear?!” 

At this, the Lord of Imladris seemed to visibly shrink into the pillows beneath him. 

“What can I do, my captain,” he whispered. “What service may I offer them, when I cannot even keep my own… my own…” Elrond swallowed a coarse lump of shame, both at his outburst and at his vulnerability, but he pushed on. “They have ruined her. She will not touch me, nor anyone save Arwen... How can I rule, evenly, wisely, when my heart has been defeated…?”

With near-feral resolution, Glorfindel knelt beside his Lord. 

“Elrond, in these treacherous times even Thranduil has pushed beyond the wounds of old,” the guard-captain hastened to insist. “He, too, lost his Queen to fading. She was abducted from the very tent they rested in, raped and held ransom for weeks. He could not spare her from Mandos… His Greenwood is spoilt, festering with Shadow, his sons hunted for sport.” He paused to allow this grim news to sink in, then played the last of his terrible hand. “Thranduil proposes an alliance of elves, between Lorien, Mirkwood, and Imladris. He journeys here as we speak to court you. I have heard his proposal. I believe it vital for our survival, for the protection of the children. *All* our dearest elflings, whether grown or newly born.”

At this, Elrond scoffed, but Glorfindel knew he had struck him. “No elfling has been born to Rivendell for two thousand years.” 

“No,” the golden elf admitted. “But one was born to Mirkwood.” 

Even Erestor struggled to absorb this announcement. 

“The Queen bore another child?” Elrond gasped openly. “But she is seven hundred years my senior!” Glorfindel nodded softly, allowing the rarity of this event to humble them. 

“A son, five years ago,” he continued with considerable reverence. “Legolas.”

“’Greenleaf’, in the ancient tongue,” Erestor softly commented, the import of the moment weighing on him. “A clear portent, my Lord.”

“Aye,” Elrond stated firmly, rising for the first time. “Fear not, my brave captain. I commend you your foresight in this matter. I will welcome Thranduil as a brother, and open myself to his regard.” 

Briefly, he turned back to the window, his gaze stretching up to again meet Earendil’s light. 

“Hannon le, Ada.” 

* * *

After a brief discussion of the necessities and preparations for the Mirkwood King’s impending arrival, both Erestor and Elrond retired to Celebrian’s chamber, the former to check on her condition and the latter to fret over it. Glorfindel regretted the lost opportunity of another debriefing with the raptly observant Loremaster, but the hour was late, his day’s journey arduous, and the famed Imladrian mineral baths beckoned his weary limbs. 

First, however, he must tend to an old friend. 

Even as the first echoes of his footsteps sounded on the path, Asfaloth readied the look of a horse forsaken in the name of diplomacy; hastily tied to a tree far from the trough, the hay bales, amidst riotous calls and the fumes of vengeance from the valley beyond. Thus, summarily abandoned by her preoccupied master. When finally his precious steed came into view, Asfaloth’s pout was so miserably rendered as to immediately draw tenderness and sympathy from the gracious Noldor. 

“There, now, my soft one,” he cooed, stroking the bristled hide of her cheek and nuzzling her nose. “Did I not swear I would be quick? Hardly an hour gone and I am done, say nothing of the bold colors of the view to distract and amaze you.” 

The horse snorted, reared, and settled back down when Glorfindel pulled a handful of pilfered carrots from his pouch. While Asfaloth chomped noisily on the contraband treats, her master unlaced her reins and gently guided her towards the stable. As they made their rather fatigued way across the yard, two kohl-black Warmbloods galloped past, their ebony flanks rippling like sails in the moonlight over well-muscled flesh. On the fearsome steeds rode equally imposing horsemen, elves of feral might, their braids woven in the manner of the Rohirrim and their armor just as frugally wrought. Only on second glance did Glorfindel note that the further rider was indeed a man of Edoras, no elf at all. When the first dismounted, however, the captain held little care for the second, who took charge of unbridling both battle horses. 

The first rider wore the colors of patrol captain. 

After whispered thanks to his Warmblood, Elladan swiftly threw off his weapons, no doubt anxious to report back to his father of the riots in the village. Glorfindel soon realized he would not have known him but for his armor colors, so changed was he from his minority. 

Where once the potential for beauty lay waiting, beauty now reigned. His face was crisp, aquiline, but betrayed a softness in the arc of his temples, the dulled joint of his jaw, the cream cast of his skin and his voluptuous lips. If his profile was blessed with a noble, elven grace, his body, though markedly fluid in movement, was forged by his Numenorian ancestry. Easily a half-foot taller than Elrond, Elladan was as trim, sinuous, and trained as a prize thoroughbred. Swaths of taut muscle slithered beneath his battle-smeared skin; his rough yet nimble fingers alone seemed capable of crushing an Orc skull with one bare hand. 

Mouth perilously dry, Glorfindel struggled to quell the titanic, near-incessant waves of feeling flooding through him. 

His person suitably unbridled, Elladan strode briskly out into the yard, then stopped cold. He stood, caught, confounded by the sight before him for a long moment, then, repossessing himself, bowed in deference. 

“My Captain,” the new, velvet-thick voice addressed him, causing the blonde elf to barely restrain himself from a jolting shudder. “The guard is honored by your presence, and heartened by your safe return.” 

Touched by his dedication – by everything about this gallant, implacable young warrior, Glorfindel bowed his head in formal acknowledgement, then raised it with an ample smile. 

“Elladan,” he culled. “It is I. There is no need for…” Glorfindel sighed as the Prince approached him, his effortless attraction giving way to a tutor’s pride. “My, but you are glorious.” 

Elladan flushed deeply at the remark, unsure of how best to welcome him, how close he wished to get. He remained aloft, uncertain, even somewhat bashful now that formality was dismissed. 

“My scouts reported a sojourn in the Mirkwood,” he ventured. “Is there news?” 

“Your *scouts*? “ Glorfindel inquired with bemusement, to mask his growing admiration. 

“Aye, my guard,” Elladan reproached, chafing under the duress of his unchecked feelings. “Those under my command.” His quicksilver eyes bore into his long-lost tutor, a deep-seeded frustration surfacing. Glorfindel was taken aback. “It was I who tracked the pack that held my Nena, and I who slew the orc that bound her. Elrohir carried her for miles after the cave and scared off the pack of Nazgul hunting her. You’ll find him much altered as well. Best prepare yourself.” With another curt bow, as well as a hint of a smirk, he made his departure. “Captain.” 

Before Glorfindel could fathom the first glimmer of a response, he’d cleared the path behind. 

* * * 

First came the eyes. The blue of a flame’s cool center, of glaciers melting to spring-water under Arien’s lapping rays, twinkling from behind the indigo folds of his father’s riding cloak; then his fingers, like shards from a shattered moonstone, already with a telltale callous at the lower joint of his left index. Last, when he shyly tucked back a thatch of cornsilk from his close-cropped hair, came the delicate teardrop ear, tuning itself to the hush of the Rivendell valley, so unlike the seething quiet of the perilous Mirkwood. 

Elrond relaxed his lips, his now perpetually furrowed brow, and opened his hands towards the weary company. Thranduil performed a deep, accomplished bow, but said nothing, waiting for the wood-nymph gathered against him to abandon his tree-tall legs and escape into view. Glorfindel and Erestor, at Elrond’s side, both took a step back, fearing their combined presence intimidated the little one. 

At last, the elfling sprung out, his speed astonishing his elders. Before they could adjust their agile eyes, he waited, below, for their acknowledgement, his own twin pools absorbing every gesture, every twitch. The petals of his lips curled mirthfully, secretively, as if holding some particularly savory observation captive. 

“Suilad, Laiqalsse,” Elrond greeted him with immediate fondness. “Nai tiruvantel ar varyuvantel i Valar tielyanna nu vilya.”

The tiny elf’s eyes grew wide with wonder at the strange tongue, then whipped back to meet his father’s, though he dared not retreat. Thranduil nodded softly, urging him on. 

“Mae govannen,” he lilted, struggling to keep his voice steady. 

“We are indeed well-met, pen-neth,” Elrond replied encouragingly, switching to the more familiar Sindarin. “I have longed to make your acquaintance.” 

The easily comprehended words seemed to shock the elfling all the more. He fixed his quivering gaze on Elrond, as if puzzling out the strange duality of his existence, then bit back a rising smirk. Just as suddenly, he threw himself onto the peredhil and fiercely hugged his legs. For the first time in many weeks, Elrond’s rich laugh boomed through the courtyard. 

Glorfindel and Erestor exchanged a pointed look of relief, then sighed in unison. 

Meanwhile, Elrond had scooped the mercurial Prince of Mirkwood up into his arms. Little Legolas wasted no time in reaching out to the gentle Lord, smoothing an opalline fingertip along the edge of his regal ear. The Half-Elven blinked one, twice, thrice, the meager touch reaching to the core of him, but resisted the crutch of indulgent sorrow. With this simple gesture, the spindly, golden elfling unwittingly mended the tares in Elrond’s heart, as well as the fraying blanket of peace over lush Imladris.

He was, indeed, an uncounted blessing. 

* * * 

At one with the night’s stillness, Elladan brushed a tender hand over his twin’s damp forehead, then knelt to kiss his brow. He gathered himself into a seat nearby, tucking Elrohir’s flushed arm between his own. This new, most potent fever had assaulted him the previous morning, most likely the result of over-exertion and, Elladan noted sourly, his brother’s determination to sit at their father’s council with Thranduil. 

The elf-warrior himself cared little for the minutiae of negotiation, but Elrohir thrived in such instances, especially those of such historic significance for their kind. Indeed, in a private moment, his brother had confided ample misgivings about this alliance to him; that their fates, their own personal freedoms might somehow be a subject for debate, for obligation. They were, after all, the heirs to Imladris, as well as her chief guardians. This trenchant anxiety had no doubt spiked the lingering strains of his long sickness into the white hot surge of fever, thus bedding him before the meeting had even begun. 

Now, as the two elven Lords thrashed out their desperate pact in the Halls of Fire, the twins haunted the Halls of Healing: Elladan cast as troubled spirit and Elrohir as shell of himself. 

Elladan sighed, shut his eyes. As in weeks past, he sunk down into himself, stretched the sinuous weave of his soul’s eternal flame out through his soothing touch, and linked the slinky tendrils to the ephemeral center of their twinness. With learned calm, he poured the balming heat of his wellness into the heady flow between them, filtering out the dense clots of fever, until the stream ran liquid pure. Elrohir’s eyes fluttered, once, then settled into a heavy, healing sleep. Elladan slipped carefully out of their shared core, regaining consciousness, but allowed a soft fugue to linger over them, stalling his retreat. 

His spirit’s touch may have dispelled the fever, yet Elladan feared his twin might never fully recover from the scratch of the Nazgul’s claw, the three blood-flecked scars of which were branded across his left eye. Though spared from blindness, the elf-knight had lain comatose for well over a month, only regaining consciousness, and a glimmer of strength, the week before. Erestor and Arwen had dug out the most arcane volumes in their library in search of an undiscovered treatment, though not a one, no matter how obscure or questionable, had been refused him. Elladan himself felt only time would prove the difference between tolerable and intolerable difficulties once recovery had set in, despite the cloying fear of never again being able to ride with Elrohir at his side. Erestor was solid, determined, but terribly cautious, a point of contention between Loremaster and apprentice, who ceaselessly muttered under her breath about an ‘alternative’ Erestor would swiftly deem ‘unthinkable’ and then dismiss. 

Elladan, with little enough patience for this ridiculous indecision, had literally taken matters into his own hands, returning nightly to Elrohir’s bedside for a course of remedial soul-linking. The results, he proudly noted, proved increasingly favorable. 

As his thoughts turned inward, the elf-warrior swallowed a tight knot of frustration. If only the same could be said of the loneliness that plagued him. With Glorfindel returned, the fog of indecision had enveloped anew, along with torrents of unchecked affections, which he had repressed for two entire millennia. The shadow of his great regard for his tutor had been cast over every last one of his lovers, no tenderness was as sweet as one the guard-captain might bestow, no gift as knowing, no sacrifice as selfless. Ever since their awkward reunion by the stables, he’d thought of little else but the blonde Noldor, their every subsequent interaction bubbling with promise. Should he reveal himself? Dismiss him for his prolonged, insulting absence? Pledge allegiance, and fight not with him, but against the tide of doubt and singeing desire that daily threatened to overwhelm the garrison-strong emotional defenses of a sworn soldier? At the least, Elladan acknowledged, he no longer believed him beloved of Erestor, who presently tread a romantic minefield far more treacherous than his own. 

This, however, was poor consolation. 

His keen mind resolutely overcome by the matters of his timid heart, Elladan replaced his sleeping brother’s hand, slipped out the back of the Healing Hall, and wandered out, into the solace of the trees. He ambled along the starlit track without notice of his way, all paths at Rivendell leading to somewhere familiar and beloved. In some small fashion, Elladan was grateful to calamity, not for the harm it dealt his dear family, but for the chance to return home. Their journeying through the lands of men, though a vital schooling in the skills of warriors, diplomats, and - if he was honest - lovers, had kept him from these kindly hills, the sanctuary of their valley and their parent’s home, for too long. Elladan knew well that, if a time of peace should return, so would his restlessness. 

Perhaps the time had come for a bond that resisted all forms of severance: distance, duty… even, in death, the waiting at Mandos. 

As if Elbereth herself had guided him through the ederwood bows, Elladan came upon his father, shroud in a haze of deep thought by the riverside. The prince was somewhat taken aback to find the Lord of Imladris alone, not busy attending his guests, but Elladan also well knew how Elrond valued reflection in times of indecision. He wagered Thranduil had given him much to reflect upon. Careful to tread loudly enough to announce himself, Elladan perched on a nearby stone and waited, drinking in the cool, settled night. His gaze floated up into the star-pricked firmament; soon near-bedazzled by Earendil’s soothing luminescence. As long as his grandfather watched over them, Imladris would be safe. 

To his own surprise, Elladan found himself speaking first. “Was your Ada as brilliant in life as he is in the heavens, Ada?”

Elrond blinked thoughtfully, coming out of his own contemplation. “Even more so, some might well say.” 

“I wish I had known him,” Elladan remarked, oblivious to the effect this might have. 

“Aye,” Elrond nodded briefly, but could not say more. “I, too, wish… but my wishes are for naught. The time is as now, and my choices…” 

“Thranduil has provoked you,” Elladan snorted, displease. “I thought as much.”

“I am provoked by his arguments,” Elrond admitted. “But it is the rightness of them that stirs me.” He unwound his legs from beneath him, letting his slender feet dip into the Bruinen. “The time has come to clean the slate, Elladan, in hopes that past wrongs can in some manner be employed as the foundation for a new alliance. A new generation of elves will reign before long, unburdened by our dark history. Your brother Elrohir, of such momentous heart, will be well-sung for his foresight, long after I have departed these shores and my part in this joining is long forgotten…” 

“Ada, are you well?” Elladan asked, the melancholy timbre of his father’s voice alerting him to deeper sorrows. “What has been decided? Why do you speak so of Elrohir?”

Elrond inwardly reproached himself such candor, gripping a solid hand over the prince’s. 

“There will be an alliance, between Imladris and Mirkwood,” he elaborated. “Your brother… the last elfling has been born to Arda, my brave one. The signs surround us even now; Thranduil, Galadriel, and I are agreed. The time of the elves is fading as your mother fades, there are no young maids in the royal houses to provide future heirs. Alliances must be forged with purer metal, strengthened through the binding of male with male.” 

Elladan gasped, guessing his father’s folly.

“He is betrothed,” Elladan barked, as his mind raced towards some alternative. “You have promised him to Mithbrethil!” 

“Mithbrethil is longtime bound, as is Luinaelin,” Elrond explained, with ample patience for the ever-more tempestuous twin. 

Elladan’s face dropped. “The elfling.”

“Aye,” Elrond all but whispered. 

“Ada, why have you done this?!” the elf-warrior exclaimed, fighting to contain his hurt and merely voice his anger. 

“On the morrow, it will be done,” Elrond clarified, but did not yield to his temper. “It will strengthen him. He will recover quickly, because of it.” 

Elladan fisted his hands, battling against the ferocity of his objections. Elrond valued calm, reasoned thoughts, would not entertain any other, especially from one so well-instructed in the art of debate. Quaking with tightly bound frustration, Elladan failed to see any logical reason his beloved twin need be betrothed to an elf not a decade in years, and thus could fashion no argument to unravel this lapse in his father’s judgment. This wrongheaded choice, added to the frailty of his emotional state… Elladan sunk his head into his now open hands, defeated. 

Then, a solution.

“I will do it, if it is to be done, Ada,” he implored. “I will guide the young one, and learn him well. Perhaps, when he is older… He may prove of some interest…” Elladan could not go on, so distasteful was the thought. 

Elrond, his senses frayed after a long day of debating these same issues, sighed deeply. He searched vainly for some reserves of compassion, then discovered a vital, ever-valid point. He considered this intrusion a moment - as it tread on terrain who’s existence Elladan rarely admitted to even himself, but decided this was the only course to convince him. 

“But I cannot allow you, nin bellas, to stifle the silent, constant song of your own heart’s longing,” he ventured with unnerving calm. Elladan stared at his father, struck dumb. “Your love for him has been mislaid these long years of his journeying, but his return… You reproach me for binding Elrohir to an elfling, but you yourself were one so young, so green to the world and yet afflicted by a passion so fierce that it has yet to abate.” 

Elladan fell to stillness, as if willing himself to evaporate. 

Elrond paused a moment; then, with a glance at the heavens, pressed on. “It would hearten me to know that both my sons were well-matched. Guarded from the Shadow’s claw and ever-steadied by the bonds of love. Have you given no thought to… declaring yourself?”

Still unable to meet his father’s eyes, Elladan rasped tightly: “I have thought of nothing else since his arrival. Since his departure, before my majority…”

“As long as that?” Elrond gasped, unaware. 

“Longer, still,” he confessed, seeing no reason to hide the rest, as his father had thoroughly discovered him. “I recall a time when I knew not the naming of such a feeling…but not a time when I bore no love for him.” 

Impressed by the enormity of Elladan’s admission, Elrond felt his blood surge with the promise of this union. 

“Then you also should be betrothed,” he concluded confidently, even if Elladan betrayed no such confidence in the matter. “I will see to it.” 

“No, Ada,” Elladan halted him, far more urgently than he intended. How would he confront Glorfindel, if he could not maintain his composure before his own kin? “It is my charge. I will speak with him.” 

“These affairs, Elladan, are best conducted formally,” Elrond advised him.

“But I would not have a ‘formal’ union, Ada,” Elladan insisted, with such sincerity as Elrond had never afore witnessed in him. “I would… Forgive my impertinence, but I have no wish of another who mistakes himself my father.” As his silver eyes took on the glint of starlight, the darkling elf retreated into the familiarity of their bond. “That I have suits me well enough, indeed.” 

His meaning easily accepted, Elrond slapped him playfully on the back. “Very well, then. May Elbereth guide you on a fair path in this, for it is no little thing to ask another’s hand in love.” 

With a halting sigh, Elladan nodded softly, feeling the cloak of his burden drape over him anew. 

* * * 

The crisp breeze of an overcast sky swooped through the high-set windows of the Hall of Healing, along the bulbous slope of the arches, and into the stagnant, invisible fumes of fever evaporating from Elrohir’s cooling skin. When the pin-prick wind brushed across his cheek, he snortled, as if roused by the touch of a phantom admirer. The sharp intake of air caught in his constricted throat, forcing him awake in a fit of thick, razing coughs. 

Wheezing, he grappled for the pitcher on the nightstand and sloppily poured himself a cup of water; spitting up almost as much as he managed to gulp down when another cough would rip through. After several clumsy attempts, he succeeded in drinking enough to settle himself, then eased his spinning head back onto the now-soaked pillow. The damp of the fabric proved soothing. Elrohir nestled an aching temple into the sweat-ripe folds, anxious to steady his swooning and focus on his surroundings. 

Finally, his wooziness lessened to mere light-headedness. His breathing suitably recovered, his gaze traveled across the still, gray room. The realization that he was indeed home slowly penetrated, as his heavy eyes gleaned over the curtained doorway, the armoire of curatives and herbal potions, the dormant hearth, the other, empty cots, and the visitor’s stools collected in the far corner. Only when he turned on his side did he nearly jump back, at the first, unfathomable sight of a flaxen-haired elfling curled against the backboard of the bed to his right. 

Elrohir had never seen an elfling before, let alone a child of wholly elven descent, though there was no doubt in his mind that this precious creature was, indeed, that. /But how can that... – *he* – be?/

Impossibly clear blue eyes peered over clenched kneecaps, his barricade of legs secured mid-calf by two white-knuckled hands. The peaks of his nimble ears took on a hummingbird’s blurred quiver, the only trace of fear in his contained, self-armored stance. The fitful stirrings of the formerly comatose must have startled him, the darkling elf reasoned, only further adding to his abandonment in what must be an unfamiliar environment. Small wonder the little one hadn’t climbed into the chimney to hide, Elrohir reflected, also noting the preternatural poise in the elfling’s position. He was equally protected and ready to pounce. 

/A fighter, then./ 

“Havo dad, pen-neth,” Elrohir cooed, slowly rising up on his elbows so as not to further intimidate him. “I mean you no harm.” Fiercely blues eyes never wavering, the elfling loosened his grip on his legs. “I am Elrohir, son of Lord Elrond and prince of Imladris.” 

Elrohir hoped these titles were familiar to him. He dared not press him, preferring that the little golden-hair calm sufficiently to present himself. Suddenly, an indecipherable mix of nausea and hunger bit deep, squeezing the delicate lining of his empty stomach. He sunk back down into the covers, his own arms protectively encircling his abdomen. 

The elfling’s questioning gaze turned instantly sympathetic; he scampered to the edge of his bed. 

“Sick?” he squeaked out. 

“My wound,” the elf-knight explained, despite his discomfort. “It curdles my hunger, to keep me from taking nourishment.” Only then did he consider the effect this revelation might have on one so young. 

“Yrch?” the elfling queried excitedly, his trepidation forgotten in an instant. 

“Nazgul,” Elrohir corrected. He lifted pained eyes in time to see the little one’s widen with rapt admiration. 

“You have fought the black riders?” the elfling breathed in a rush, as if to utter their very name would curse him. 

“I had no choice,” he mused. “They had my Nena.” 

At that, the little elf’s face softened, a similar regret echoed in his fine features. He momentarily drew into himself, a shockingly mature desolation seeming to overtake him. Elrohir, content with that, slumped onto his back and begged sleep for his weary bones. Moments before his surrender to the blackness, a dull patter sounded at his side. 

He looked up to see the elfling above him, now somehow on his bed, curiously examining his battered torso, his sallow face. He at once noticed the scarlet slit on the plum of the child’s upper arm, mended and bound with the usual wraithseed compress. Only then, when the young one laid a warm hand over his stomach, did the unfamiliar scar on his own wrist begin to singe. 

“From where do you hail, pen-neth?” he posed calmly, though the blood sung within him at the elfling’s balming touch. “What is your name?”

“Legolas,” he replied, his lips curling into a pensive smile. “I am of Mirkwood.” 

As the elfling laid his head onto the elf-knight’s undulating chest, Elrohir wondered at this strange occurrence. Had Thranduil invaded the Rivendell valley? Were his kindred slain? Had he been taken captive? Drugged? Ransomed? Or was some greater mischief unleashed on the Last Homely House by the wolves of Mordor? 

As he contemplated the repercussions of these bleak scenarios, Elrohir absently stroked a finger along the downy rim of the little elfling’s ear. 

* * *

Setting himself an even, leisurely pace, Glorfindel followed Erestor’s earth-toned Loremaster’s robes through the mist-shroud paths of the forest, their patient strides masking the thunderous reasoning of both their minds, the inner struggle to make some sense out of the unrepentant events of the past few hours. After the brief ceremony of betrothal, Elrond had retreated to Celebrian’s chambers, once again abandoning his two chieftains to the uneasy contemplation of their part in the archaic ritual. 

Erestor, ever fretful, was the first to give voice on the matter. 

“The air is sharp,” he murmured. “Out of season.”

“As is the time,” Glorfindel chimed in. “It weighs on me, meldir. Why couldn’t the ritual wait on his recovery?” 

“Thranduil would return to his kingdom,” Erestor mused. “His presence here targets Rivendell, and calamity has so recently struck…”

“Then why come at all, when my message would suffice?” Glorfindel grumbled. “I feel I have been a pawn in this, Loremaster. I never heard talk of betrothal when in Mirkwood, this mischief was planned en route, if at all. I like it not.”

“Nor I, mellon-nin,” the comely elf agreed, his lips soured into a moue. “But it is done.” 

“Aye,” the guard-captain near-snarled. “Elrohir is now plagued as I have been. The elfling I once coddled now betrothed to one as dear and innocent as he was, when I held him… It burns me, Erestor!!” Glorfindel turned his head to spit, so thick was his mouth with disgust. “I have spent my energies protecting Elladan’s virtue, when all this time I knew not the risk to Elrohir. I have failed him, meldir. I have failed them all…”

Erestor inhaled deeply, then rushed out his collected breath. The guilt seared to his very core, spurred by Glorfindel’s brash admission. The Loremaster could find no words to comfort him, as his own shame singed the edges of every potential argument. 

All, save one. 

“Take heart,” Erestor counseled, attempting to convince himself as he strived to convince the captain. “Perhaps now… you may be free to indulge your own heart’s longings.”

“How can that be?” Glorfindel demanded, incensed. “Elladan assented to his twin’s binding to an elfling, he will no doubt give audience to any green suitor Elrond may chose for him, ignorant of his own heart’s pining: Orthilor of Cirdan’s blood, or Lintharos the frail, or that brash Haldir of the Galadhrim.”

“H-Haldir,” Erestor blanched, then swallowed hard. “He is promised to Arwen.” 

“Is he?!” Glorfindel snarked with further outrage. “Then perhaps before long they will beget a husband for Elrond’s younger son!”

“Perhaps,” Erestor echoed, unthinking. “Mellon-nin, I must inform you of -“

Before the Loremaster could bleat out his confession, a rather spry Elladan was upon them. 

“Mae govannen, Lambengolmor,” the elf-warrior smirked archly, his quicksilver eyes brimming. “Such gloomy faces, on this day of such… promise.” 

“You are mirthful, Elladan,” Erestor immediately commented, to allow his friend time to recover himself from the shock of this sudden appearance. The guard-captain’s temper was immediately chastened; in its stead a dreadful stillness came over him, a palpable, perilously brittle restraint. Little wonder, with Elladan so cheerful and mysteriously out of character. 

“A convoy, from Lorien, will shortly arrive,” he appraised them. “Lord Celeborn, attended by Galadhrim… the fair Haldir among them.” He arched a potent eyebrow, anticipating the Loremaster’s befuddled reaction.

Erestor did not disappoint, though Glorfindel shot the preoccupied elf a look of burnished triumph. 

“When… are they… expected?” the now-shuddering Loremaster managed, clamping his jaw shut to silence his chattering teeth. 

“Presently,” Elladan ambiguously added, delighting in his Lore-tutor’s ample fidgets. “Best you return home to… prepare yourself, aye, Erestor?” 

“Well judged, my brave one,” he quickly acknowledged, then beat an astoundingly rapid retreat from the still forest. 

Even Glorfindel could not help but mark this transformation. “Has Erestor some grudge with Celeborn, pen-neth?”

Swallowing the urge to reproach him for the condescension, Elladan focused on the matter at hand and instead remarked: “Has your company been so sparse these long years as to not recognize the pangs of early love, Captain?” 

“Love?!” Glorfindel exclaimed, the trappings inherent in the discussion unnerving him. He steadied his galloping breaths with iron resolve. “Erestor is in love with Lord Celeborn?” /He’s been nothing but comfort to me, and all these years his heart’s suffered…/

Elladan laughed outright, relishing his power to unmoor both his elders. 

“Celeborn?” he chuckled, in studied amazement. “A treacherous climb that would be. But our dear Loremaster has envisioned an even more perilous peak to conquer.” Elladan paused to savor the moment, Glorfindel waiting on his every word. “The beauteous Haldir, son of Fearolin.” 

“The reputed guard-captain of Lorien,” Glorfindel alighted on the reason for Erestor’s anxiety. “Who does not in any case favor the binding of male to male spirit.” 

“The very same,” Elladan frowned, the weight of the matter finally sinking down. “Ada has bravely taken up their cause by promising Arwen to Haldir, so that he may come to visit Imladris at times when the Shadow’s threat on Lorien abates. But with Celeborn’s accompaniment… perhaps they will at last be bound, and their love revealed.” Elladan smiled sweetly at the thought, turning inward. 

Leaning back on a birchwood trunk, Glorfindel contemplated this welcome news, as well as the manner in which it was related to him. With Elladan fallen quiet, he allowed his gaze to linger over his hush, regal features, their secrets tightly held. Too long had he let his own closely-checked feelings rule his every action towards the young prince, as witnessed in his reactions just moments before. If he was to truly protect Elladan from this knowledge, then he must regain his favor. This strategy would prove costly to Glorfindel himself, but would no doubt aid his former charge. 

“And what of your heart, pen-neth?” he ventured. “Is there not some blithe elf-maid that entrances you? Or perhaps, no doubt to Fearolin’s regret, one of the bracing Galadhrim that’s won you with his steel and strength?”

The stony eyes that met him hit hard, choke-deep. Then, to the guard-captain’s shock, they moistened. 

“There is one I favor,” Elladan confessed, his voice shred raw. “Though I am unmannered in these gentle ways, and know not how to…how to express…” He bit into his bottom lip, as if to restrain some untamed truth. 

Glorfindel pushed off the birchwood and approached him with practiced vigilance, he himself not entirely suited to such gentility. He rested a strong, comforting hand between his charge’s tense shoulder-blades, leaning in to encourage intimacy. Such proximity urged him further on, but he grit his teeth and bested it. 

“Ada has made it known that he wishes me soon betrothed,” Elladan confided. 

“Has he suggested other suitors?” the guard-captain inquired. “Does he not approve of your choice?” 

Elladan shook his head. “He approves it well. I did not think my… my will in this could be granted, yet he himself suggested him, unprovoked.” 

“Then what stays your happiness, pen-neth?” Glorfindel asked, readying himself for the blow. 

With halted breaths, Elladan opened his mouth to speak, but found his voice momentarily absent. As a warrior, he had stared down legions of orcs, a host of the Shadow’s minions, the deadly Nazgul themselves, but one look into Glorfindel’s patient, compassionate eyes and his heart was cleft in twain. After two thousand years of searching, he had yet to uncover the compound argument, the eloquent turn of phrase that might victoriously woo the hallowed favor of the Balrog-slayer. Glorfindel had known two lifetimes worth of lovers, what quality could his own troublesome tenacity possess that would trounce their cherished charms? 

Elladan clung tight to his one indisputable strength of character – his stubbornness – and trod the path of righteousness. 

“I await but your reply, my Captain,” he murmured to him. “To the question that has yet to challenge you. Would you consent to… to…” 

Caught by Glorfindel’s wondering stare, unable to longer bear this shaming torment, Elladan pushed into his guardian’s arms and brushed a timorous, unwaveringly tender kiss over his soft mouth. As quietly as he’d come on, Elladan sprung back, his spine instantly sparked with tension, his nerves alight. In his astonishment, Glorfindel unwittingly leaned further into him, reeling from the far, far too brief contact, his senses in a tail-spin, overcome by momentous feeling. 

“And… and Elrond…?” he mumbled, felled by Elladan’s continued proximity. 

“He consents,” the prince assured him.

“And… when…?” 

“A fortnight,” Elladan bleated, the significance of the moment near roasting him through. “That is, if… no other journey…”

“There is none,” he confirmed. 

His mind, his reason now entirely engulfed by the surge of his eternal flame, Glorfindel rested his head on Elladan’s stiff shoulder; this tenuous contact enough to sear his cheek with the heat pouring from him. Never, the Noldor swore to himself, would he know of the bond forged in his infancy, of the link that now swells his heart to bursting, such is its command, its sway. 

Glorfindel, rallying, rose to meet those molten mithril eyes, this last requirement vital to their proposed union. “And you, Elladan… you choose… freely?”

“Aye,” he breathed voicelessly, stunned silent. 

“Then… *Aye*, pen-neth,” Glorfindel finally consented, holding fast to his trembling charge. 

“Aye?” Elladan gasped, his flush face draining fast. “You… you would…?”

Elladan’s resulting sigh gusted more mightily than all the winds of Arda melded into one. He stood up, straight, proud, and enveloped Glorfindel in a look of such intense regard that the Noldor blushed a fierce crimson. Once again, he met his waiting mouth, but this time as a lover would, with passion, with promise; and, like a true connoisseur of such delicacies, he did not linger.

“A fortnight, then,” he concluded, catching Glorfindel’s hand in his own and sweetly caressing the palm. “I will presently announce us to my Lord and father.” 

With a final, glorious smile, Elladan bowed in deference, then strode off into the mist; leaving Glorfindel amidst the clouds, to ponder whether the prince had been, somehow, a vision, or a waking dream.

 

End of Part Two

 

A/N: Significance of the names of Legolas’ brother (and you thought I just pulled them out of my head):

Mithbrethil – mith = gray, brethil = silver birches, therefore the ‘gray/silver birches’ (of   
which I’m told there are plenty in Mirkwood).

Luinaelin – luin = blue, aelin = lake, therefore the ‘blue lake’ 

Mostly, others who’ve named them pick names that I don’t find lyrical enough. Legolas is such a sweeping, beautifully fashioned name. Why wouldn’t his brothers have similar names, also associated with nature? Exactly. 

Elvish Translations:

Quenya:

/Suilad, Laiqalasse/ = Greetings, Legolas

/Nai tiruvantel ar varyuvantel i Valar tielyanna nu vilya./ = May the Valar protect you on your path under the sky.

/Lambengolmor/ = Loremaster 

Sindarin:

/mellon-nin/ or /meldir/ = my friend

/pen-neth/ = little one

/nin bellas/ = my strength

/Mae govannen/ = well met, or welcome

/gwanur/ = brother

/Nena/ = mother

/Ada/ = father


	3. Binding

Part Three

Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 2,510

Elladan eyed the finery spread across his bed, and sighed. 

He lazily fingered the leaves of gold woven into his wreath-crown, as he inspected the custom-made - and customary - ornaments before him: a tunic of near-diaphanous azure gauze, blue velvet leggings lined with gold embroidery, varnished warg-hide boots, a chain-link vest of stunning mithril ore, a basket of perfumes, lotions, flowers, hair clasps, all to refine his virile essence, all to mask his brute edain ancestry. He tossed the crown into the center, then crossed his arms over his broad chest. 

“Come, gwanur, you must choose,” Elrohir beckoned from his seat on the window ledge. As soon as he had uttered the urging, he pursued his own by looking out, into the melancholy, yet temperate day. 

Beyond the elliptical glass, on the paths below, Erestor strolled with Haldir. Between them hung a squirming, all-too-familiar flaxen-haired elfling. The lovers each clung to a gangly arm, lifting the little elf as they went, then swinging him back and forth. Legolas gamely gave himself up to them; the rapturous peals of his giggles sounding faintly through the thick glass. Before long, he’d mastered the rhythm of their movements, improvising a back-flip, a suspended summersault, a launch-and-roll. Again and again he returned to their arms, plying them with a gleeful smile to more challenging levels of agility. Elrohir was heartened to see others suitably plied by the young Mirkwood prince’s mercurial charms. 

Elladan observed his engrossed twin a moment, smirked, then glared down at the various textures of ribbon to be woven into his braids: silver, indigo, aquamarine, violet. Who was this elf that would be bound to the mighty Balrog-slayer? Surely not the one who had wooed and won him; an elf who’d rode five hundred years with the Rohirrim, who slept in the stables he’d daily scrubbed, had learned to smith the welts in his armor, and had once scaled the sheer face of the Mark with only the use of his hands. Wither this brave elf; unmatched in swordsmanship, patrol lieutenant, border-guard, archer of considerable skill, and noted for his fearsome tenacity? / I have never rested on my titles. Yet on this most precious day, I am named by them alone./ 

“I have a length of rawhide, from Tuor’s scabbard,” Elladan announced, with such a determination that Elrohir knew any protest would be futile. “An unexpected gift from Glorfindel, the day of our majority, by special courier.” He disregarded another sharp look from his twin, as he rifled through his chest of arms. “It will honor him.” 

“If he can claim to notice black leather in one of raven hue,” Elrohir reproached him. “And there is but one length of it. What of the other side?”

“It will not look so ill, with double plaiting,” Elladan brusquely explained.

Elrohir exhaled longly, too weak still to mount any suitable defense against his mulish twin. 

“Elladan, you are to be bound, not called to arms,” he chided, his gaze again wandering out of doors to the training fields beyond. “The traditional manner of braiding -“

“I am a warrior and a marksman, not a maid,” Elladan growled at him, the nervousness that underlay these brash commands readily exposed. “This luxury mocks outright the respect I bear him, as guard-captain, as guardian, as tutor, as warrior-“

“As lover?” Elrohir smirked from his perch. “These ‘luxuries’, as you say, are but a part of your duty as a prince to his subjects. They do not lessen; they enhance the beauty of what you are. And you are, gwanur-nin, an elf of rare allure, as Glorfindel himself will no doubt uncover, when these trappings are shed and you are bare before him. Is this, perhaps, what truly concerns you?” 

“I would not brand it ‘concern’,” he offered, now grown bashful. “Longing, perhaps… anticipation… *desire*.” He absently wound the thin leather strap around his hand, lingering on the idea of their future intimacy. “Aye, he is desired. Hopelessly so…” 

“Such skills, he must possess, in the ways of love,” the elf-knight teased, unable to resist. “Two lifetimes, a host of people from which he has studied well…” Elrohir considered this a moment, then judged Elladan luckier than he’d first suspected. He gestured towards the armchair before the mirror, as the time for preparations crept slowly away.

“Aye, and I must prove myself their better,” Elladan mused, as he sat. “Perhaps I am… somewhat concerned.” With ample fondness, Elrohir kissed the crown of his hair, then began to brush through the swaths of shimmering ebony. 

“Then best allow yourself every confidence,” he concluded, snatching a length of black leather from his own pocket and draping it over his twin’s arm, beside the other. “This, I believe, will compliment Tuor’s scabbard-strap.” 

Astonished, Elladan wonderingly fingered the leather strip, then met his brother’s mirthful look in the mirror. After a gentle, grateful smile, Elladan let the moment pass without comment. Some matters of import needed not be spoken of to be cherished. 

Instead, he noted the elf-knight’s eyes straying yet again to the window. 

“I marvel at your strength, gwanur, mere days after your fever,” he complimented archly.

“Over a week, now, Elladan,” Elrohir, distracted, informed him. “You were perhaps too embroiled in this matter of your binding to properly note the passage of time.”

“You mistake me, my dear one,” Elladan smirked rakishly. “Every hour was as an eternity. I tallied the minutes as orcs I’d slay in battle, every heartbeat as a blow to the chest.”

Elrohir snorted: “You are no poet, gwanur.”

“And you, no prince’s consort,” he underlined. “Yet nary a protest escaped from your lips when Ada informed you of your betrothal to a mere elfling.” 

Elrohir considered this a moment, choosing his words with explicit care.

“I have never loved, as you, one above all others,” Elrohir explained, as he set about separating the lengths of his hair. “If by my binding I can better serve Imladris and our people, then a prince of Mirkwood is as fair as one of Lorien, or even Valinor. His manner pleases, he is uncommonly swift, and strong, and merry.”

“He will be beautiful,” Elladan further taunted. 

“Aye, that is plain,” the elf-knight murmured, pensive. 

“But an elfling, Elrohir,” Elladan protested, the matter still burning him. 

“He will not long *be* an elfling,” he insisted. “I may guide him as we were guided by our betters, in ways of war, law, propriety, manner… love. Have you not considered, Elladan, that I may fashion him the lover of my choice?”

“And what of his will in loving?” Elladan grunted, irritated by his twin’s rather innocent ideas of the ways of love, and in particular the fashioning of an elfling’s desires. “And what do you know of love, nin bellas, if you have never felt it?”

“I have loved and been loved by the most valiant hearts among the Noldor,” he snarked, tugging roughly at the hair between his fingers. “You, Ada, Arwen, Nena, Erestor, Lindir, Glorfindel… and already I feel… a… a softness, towards him.” 

Elladan retreated, having perhaps struck deeper than intended. He considered his own past loves, for he had loved afore, though none as intensely, as unwaveringly as Glorfindel. And what of the Balrog-slayer? Would their potential union have been as richly blessed, as true, without his prolonged absence; during which Elladan had been allowed to experiment, to err, to indulge himself? Would he have been successful in his proposal had it occurred centuries ago, before his travels and his training? Could he then have made a proper match for an elf of two lifetimes gone, when even now he questioned his worth, his ability to please such a hallowed spirit? He abandoned these musings as worthless; Glorfindel had gone, he had grown, and their union would be as it was. 

He longed, suddenly, for the time to blink by, for the bliss of waking in Glorfindel’s arms tomorrow, safe and sated; the ceremony, the feasting, their first coupling passed and done. For the far more precious luxury of an eternity vowed and together hungered for. 

His task complete, Elrohir tucked a tender finger beneath his brother’s chin, raised it to take in the striking sight of himself. He had fastened the elf-warrior’s braids with a lock of his stallion’s mane, as was tradition among the horsemen of the Riddermark. Elladan rose to be dressed, his twin selecting a tunic of rich violet, clean rider’s breeches, spit-polished black boots of the dwarf mines in Angmar, but fetched the stunning mithril vest from the bed, a gift from their mother. Elladan himself fastened his dagger behind his left calf and his grandfather Celeborn’s sword at his side. Lastly, Elrohir set his brother’s wreath-crown upon his bowed head, completing the bold look of a peredhel warrior-prince. 

Elladan stood proudly before him, every inch his fearsome, gallant self. 

* * * 

For a brief moment, Glorfindel shut his eyes to the sober feast around him. He imagined himself back at Tuor’s court in Gondolin, at Tuor’s side, freshly arrived from his House of the Golden Flower for one of the King’s lavish repasts. There, as here, as now, the court reveled to stave off fear, off weeping, for each night that passed moved their people closer to war and none knew if, on the morrow, a red dawn would rise. 

At present newly bound in love, Glorfindel might himself confess to a similar, soul-shroud dread. 

As his scattershot mind rejoined the company, he gazed over to his side, at Elladan. His husband’s staid features proved similarly reflective, though archly so. Glorfindel could easily trace the journey of his placid gray eyes, from a thoroughly bored Thranduil, to impish Legolas on courtly Elrohir’s lap, from Elrond’s hush gravity to Arwen’s concern, over Erestor’s vain attempts to feign indifference to Haldir’s studied calm, echoed in Celeborn’s regal grace. Last, the mirthril orbs latched on to his, shimmering with unbound regard. Elladan gathered his lazy hand between his own, cradling the length of his arm as if to warm a fretful babe. 

Though his smile faded, the argent forge of his eyes seared through the space between them, steaming through the length of the Noldor’s skin and broiling his blood to a viscous red lava. Red as the coming dawn; ravagement masked by nature’s cool beauty. Glorfindel knew, then, that this hallowed binding would forever keep him from indulging in its sweetest promises. He could not protect this rare pearl husband, this treasure of the heart entrusted to him, if he were slave to its passions. By knowing him, by opening himself to bliss and therefore blinding himself to danger, he would forsake the vow taken on Elladan’s first begetting-day: to guard him, without falter or fail, every day of his eternal life. 

The vow renewed just hours before, in the glaring light of those keen, quicksilver eyes. 

When the rapture that followed Elladan’s appearance beneath the southern balcony’s laurel-strewn buttresses had sunk comfortably in, Glorfindel had exhaled slowly. With this sweeping breath had passed the last clogs of impeding anxiety: it would be now, their joining. It would soon be done. The young peredhel would have seemed sleek and true as rapier’s steel, were it not for the faint blurring of his haloed silhouette beneath the amber skylight. When Glorfindel had clasped his slender hands in his, the prince passed on the tremors that betrayed him. The blonde Eldar had raised the quaking hands to his lips, three stealthy caresses had silenced them. 

Later, at the final stitch of their binding, Elladan had cause to prove his mettle. Ever-caught in the swells of his molten silver eyes, Glorfindel willed himself to mark his tender mouth with his own, but the ferocity of his feelings had stayed him before such noble company as the Lords of Imladris, Mirkwood, and Lorien. Elladan, at this most cherished minute, had thought of nothing like fathers, brothers, lords, or assemblies, but only of the husband who now welcomed him.

He had kissed him such as longtime lovers do, with patience, with reverence, with coursing, blistering need. Glorfindel was too overcome, then, too felled by the dam of his resolve breaking to realize the implications of this unequivocal surrender to their shared destiny. 

That kiss would be the last of its kind they could ever share.

Elladan blinked, once, and the spell was broken. The shrill tittering of the surrounding company assaulted Glorfindel’s gauzy senses, as his husband’s gaze once again arced across the low-lit hall. Satisfied, Elladan squeezed his hand near to breaking and leaned in to whisper to him. 

“I would bathe afore we tuck in, nin ind,” he rasped into the hollows of his ear, his voice ripe with insinuation. “Stay awhile longer, for my father. Then, fetch a carafe of miruvor from the kitchen, and follow to our bedchamber.” 

“I will, meleth,” Glorfindel assured him, as the prince pecked an eager kiss onto the corner of his mouth. 

“Well, then,” Elladan smirked, complicit. “Do not tarry.” 

The elf-warrior rose as a general leading the charge, bowed deeply before the assembled company, and strode off down a torch-lit hall. 

As Glorfindel watched his bold figure sink into the shadows, a sharp chill seized him. 

* * * 

As blithely as his grandmother Elwing before him, Elladan’s lissome arms parted his bathwaters and he rose from the steaming depths, the length of his taut skin as brilliant as the silmaril above. He’d seasoned the bath with coral grinds from the shores of Belfalas, in Gondor, which scored the last of the grime from his pores, leaving the sweeps and slopes of his muscular frame soft, lustrous. He ably toweled his tight-strung body off, resolutely avoiding the thought of his new husband’s justly curious fingers roving the clefts, bends, and hollows long-familiar to the half-elf, soon to be equally well-known by his love. 

Elladan swallowed hard, struggled for some brief control. *Glorfindel*. /By Elbereth, I never dared hope this day would come./ 

The young prince was never less than battle-ready; as such, he’d quietly, and rightly, hunted out Erestor’s aid. The Loremaster had prepared him a spray of cascade mist for his hair, a yasbrinth musk to balm his skin, and a more glutinous salve for their coupling. The amber blooms of yasbrinth had adorned the banners and shields of the House of the Golden Flower, its creeping vines had lined the rail of its Lord’s balcony and Glorfindel had always favored its rich, enveloping scent; or so the prince had sussed from Erestor’s Haldir-plied tongue one evening. 

With lust-heavy hands, he worked the fragrant cream over his chest, legs, arms, meticulously anointing himself for Glorfindel to take his pleasure. As he loosed the obsidian wash of his hair, he chewed a sprig of balemint to refresh his breath. He gulped a cup of spring water, swished, then spat the leaf-strewn mush into the bath. Lastly, he wove a sheet of violet silk around his waist, expertly knotting the fabric at his side and pushing the edge down over the hip-bones, perilously close to exposing him. Wisps of dark hair pooled around his nipples, snaked down the center of his chest to thicken, then dip, at his navel, as if guiding the careful lover to his body’s treasures.

Still far too eager to be purposeful in seduction, Elladan tarried at the baths awhile. His mind lingered over thoughts of Glorfindel, that first glimpse of him down the aisle, the look in his eyes at the moment of their binding, afterwards at the table, at his side. He wondered if his husband would be wanting, or modest, or both in good measure? Would he similarly prepare himself with supple oils, or remain coarse, dressed in finery or stripped bare, his hair left in plaits to be sensuously unraveled or hanging, loose and wanton? Elladan couldn’t decide which he longed for more. 

In the distance, the sentry at the watch called curfew with his burly horn. A wickedly delicious smile twisting the edges of his lips, Elladan took one last drink of water, then slipped through the entrance to their bedchamber. 

There, Glorfindel waited. 

Elladan had no eyes for the candle-lit room, for the petal curls scattered over the top sheet, or for the crystal flask of miruvor waiting on the way-table. Glorfindel was still clothed in his finery; Elladan would most gladly unburden him. As he walked through the pools of flickering glow towards his radiant husband, his gaze was fixed on him alone. His breath came in short, hungry pants as he neared, his muscles tense, primed. With precariously held restraint, he brushed his hands up Glorfindel’s broad chest and unfastened the first clasp of his vest, teasing. 

The Noldor chucked softly, lowered his eyes, flush with arousal. 

“Here we are, at last,” Elladan smiled, taming down his own roused senses. He flicked his index finger over the tip of Glorfindel’s ears, then smoothed along their downy edge. “How would you have me, melethron?” 

To his surprise, Glorfindel’s back stiffened to a formal stance. He broke their embrace, backing carefully away. Elladan raised an eyebrow, could the Balrog-slayer himself be nervous? 

“If you would indulge me a moment,” Glorfindel requested. “I have… a gift.” 

“A gift?” Elladan twinkled, now ravenously curious. Glorfindel was even more cunning than he had imagined. 

Presently, the golden elf swept over to the outer door, peered outside, then beckoned someone enter. Elladan, still intrigued, crossed his arms over his chest to cover himself and waited, already growing restless. To his astonishment, a young horseman – surely of Rohan – padded carefully into the chamber, then stood before him, as if for his approval. Elladan would have thought him the bearer of his gift, were it not for the fact that he was glazed with lavender oil like an oxtail roasted for feasting and wore little other than a loin-cloth. 

The prince of dignity forced his gaping mouth shut; the warrior of honor readied himself for truth’s cruel charge against him. 

“I must mistake you, husband,” he stated, weighing each word as he would a silver coin. “He bears no gift.” 

“He *is* my gift to you, my brave one,” Glorfindel murmured, struggling to bury his rising disgust at this he must do. “For your pleasure, in my stead.” 

When the truth struck, Elladan found himself - despite his best intentions - ill-prepared. He had firstly thought Glorfindel of such colorful palette as to desire them both to enjoy the youth, but not… this perversion. *Never* this. The blood in his veins ran to ice, his bones hardened to brittle, weighty stone. Bile threatened to choke him, but he swallowed it down, along with the torrents of acid-burn sorrow flooding his now-leaden chest. His head throbbed, as if an axe had severed his skull in two, the gory strings of gray matter nested in his hair like a crown of his own entrails. /It cannot be. He consented, we are bound… it cannot be!!/

Though every flint of his soul-fire raged within, Elladan, ever tenacious in the face of adversity, rallied. His titles rarely inspired pride in him, but in this moment he was every inch a Prince of Imladris. He bowed, steady in his grace, and met his husband’s eyes with steel affront. 

“My deepest thanks, most hallowed Glorfindel,” he almost cooed. “But I must abstain. The day has been…” He clasped his hands behind his back, the knuckles of their clawed fingers bit by pain. “…unforeseeably trying. I would promptly retire.” 

“He does not please you?” Glorfindel asked, his voice nearly abandoning him, unsure whether the darkling elf’s acquiescence or abeyance would hearten him more. 

“He is fair,” Elladan dully appraised, unable to bear the sight of the Rohirrim a second longer than necessary. “Please, kind sir, my apologies. You are most…” He could not finish. He turned on his heel, cursing himself, and deliberately ambled over to the wardrobe. He heard the door shut behind him. 

“Erestor has often told tales of your exploits among the men of the Riddermark,” Glorfindel explained. “I thought he would suit you.”

“Perhaps another…” Elladan rested his forehead against the cherrywood door, unable to continue. He felt Glorfindel approach behind him, tensed for his touch. There was none.

“*Elladan*,” his husband whispered. “You must not mistake… I am your sworn guardian, I was this long before I became your husband. I have taught you, trained you, known you since you were an elfling… I must protect you at *all* costs. I cannot…” 

At this, Elladan began to rifle through the wardrobe, extricating his riding tunic, leggings, boots. He dressed swiftly, willfully ignoring Glorfindel as he bleat on with his notions of propriety and of service. Elladan knew something of service to his kin; he knew of devotion, and loyalty, and loss. 

No fallen compatriot would come close to equaling this loss, in his heart. 

When at last Glorfindel reached out to him, he reared, eyes blazing, and unceremoniously fled the room, no longer able to take another breath in the stench of his presence. 

* * *

The horns of curfew long blown, Elrohir was more than a bit surprised to look up from the library gamestable and observe, through the fine-crafted stone gables, his twin charging across the guardsmen’s yard to the stables. At first, he though his mind warped by the three decadent goblets of his father’s special vintage of Forochel ice-wine he’d consumed, but Erestor soon raised chin and eyebrow, as well. Although their Battle Game had done little to distract the Loremaster’s thoughts from the ever-so-vital conversation between Haldir, Celeborn, and Elrond currently surpassing its second hour, this latest wrinkle in the day’s supposed bliss caught Erestor’s full attention. 

Elrohir knew well that his faulting mind could not stand another stress; he raised a hand to stay him. 

“You are still weak,” Erestor protested. 

“Physically, I concur,” the elf-knight admitted. “But mentally, dear guardian, I have bested you five times in the last hour. The night is unseasonably fair. Pour yourself another glass, and await the happy news of your own imminent betrothal.” 

With a wink, Elrohir sauntered off, hardly a twinge fouling his graceful steps. Indeed, between his brother’s nightly séances and days spent chasing after Legolas, he would shortly be right as rain. / If only I had no sense of the coming storm/, Elrohir reflected heavily, as he circled round the stables and slipped through the guard’s entry. The stables were eerily black. Not a lick of moonlight beamed through the roof-peak skylight, pools of forming cloud would soon completely blanket the heavens. As he crept up the back stairwell to the watchmaster’s quarters, not a stallion stirred, not an owl cawed, not a light shone from the loft above; but a windless, scraping chill slowly permeated the air, alerting Elrohir to his brother’s presence.

Even in his presumed misery, Elladan reasoned as a soldier would. The Lord of Imladris having doubled the patrols, not a soul would return to the quarters until well after dawn. Yet if his absence went undetected, none would search for him here; save Elrohir himself, knowing well the reliable sense of comfort the barracks always brought him. Still, the elf-knight surmised that Elladan had little thought of being discovered before morn, hardly expecting Glorfindel to sound the alarm. /But what has passed between them to send him fleeing into the night, like a maid married to a miser?/ 

When Elrohir soundlessly stepped into the doorway, the cold bruised him raw as the hilt of a broadsword. Though he could not yet see Elladan in the rabid darkness, he felt his way to him, forcing his frost-bitten limbs further and further into the glacial room. Never had his twin’s sorrow been so viscerally affecting; indeed, Elrohir could not recall a time when the elf-warrior had felt anything near such crippling misery, not even when they’d discovered their mother, in the orc’s cave. He clamped his jaw shut to halt his clattering teeth, then shoved his rigid legs through the entrance to the small armory. 

He was certain his awkward, stomping progress had long announced his presence, but when he finally managed to light the wall candle, he perceived only Elladan’s startled look. Elrohir’s face soon dully echoed the sentiment: his valiant brother was crouched among the shield-stands in the far corner, his legs tucked into his chest, silently weeping. Elrohir had never seen Elladan weep before; had not, until that very minute, believed him capable of weeping, such was his self-possession. Elladan did not weep. He seethed, or stabbed, or wreaked bloody vengeance, but rare was the day he indulged his own sadness. Even when Glorfindel had left, before their majority, he had simply bid him farewell and retreated to the training fields, his ferocious dedication to his betterment tripled in intensity. 

Elrohir’s own sword-hand clenched restlessly, even their cherished guardian was not immune from the brunt of his battle-axe, should his abuse of his brother prove blameworthy. Still, Elladan would not be settled by his rancor. He inhaled deeply, then crouched before his trembling brother. 

“Aiya, gwanur,” he began, settling down in the corner, but knowing well enough not to touch him unless beckoned. “What is this sadness, on this most hallowed of nights?”

“I am betrayed, Elrohir,” he whispered forlornly. Shamed by even this slight confession, he seemed to retreat into himself. “I cannot say more.” 

“Elladan,” he cooed, risking a steady grip on his brother’s knee. “It is I. The sorrow will not pass if you do not unburden yourself. I have long kept your secrets. I will keep this one, as well.” Elladan dug his chin into his chest, another wave of searing desolation overtaking him. 

“And if I cannot keep it?” he berated himself. “If I myself dishonor the one to which I was so enthusiastically bound?” This last was bleated out with braising self-abasement, so fierce, so hateful, that Elladan abandoned his defenses, allowing his twin to crawl into the corner of the shield-stands and to wrap his steady arms around him. The elf-warrior clamped his eyes shut to dam another surge of tears, but the salty streams broke through, undaunted. /What has become of me?! Reduced to simpering like maimed Shadowspawn!/

“Confound it, Elladan!!” Elrohir suddenly spat, his blood bittered at seeing his gallant twin so cruelly undone. “You must tell the toll of it, else I’ll grab that hunting spike and stake a confession from Glorfindel himself!” At that ridiculous pronouncement – his twin having been long ago proved barely useful wielding other than a bow and arrows – Elladan managed to ebb his flowing eyes, but could not loosen the grip of shame that seized him. Still, best confess it, before Elrohir too felt its sting.

“When I entered our bedchamber from my bath, ready for… for…” Elladan swallowed hard, his throat, unlike his eyes, parched dry. 

“Aye,” Elrohir encouraged him. “A sight you must have been.”

“I doubt he took notice,” Elladan snarked sourly, his misery slowly giving way to deadly rage. “He had procured another, for my… amusement.” 

“Another?” Elrohir gasped. “For your bedding?!”

Elladan nodded, once, then rasped: “In his stead. He would not consent to our… coupling, so he bought me the favors he presumed I would enjoy… a *man*, Elrohir, a man of Rohan, not even an elf! And a soldier, to quicken my shame and make meat of these years of proving my worth to the tiresome Dunedain!!” 

Elrohir stared dully at his brother, so blindsided by this turn of events he could not form words to comfort him. The confession, however, seemed to center Elladan, a bleak, resigned vengeance dawning in his stone gray eyes. 

“I have been careless, gwanur, I see it now,” he rallied. “Diverted from our path by trifles and politicking. The intent of my binding was an alliance, a strength to bear the coming woes, and by our vows it has been forged, not by any presumed coupling. We have lived apart before and survived, we will again.” He rose to a seated position, fixing his still befuddled twin with a razor-keen stare. “Yet our mother sails for Valinor in a fortnight, and her troubles lurk, unavenged, waiting to pounce.” 

Guessing his brother’s intent, Elrohir selected his next words with a diplomat’s care. “Ada requires the strength of all his children for the bearing of such loss, Elladan. Surely you above all understand that we cannot abandon him to heartache.”

“We will not abandon him,” Elladan insisted. “We will rage in his stead, immolating the Shadow’s lairs with the fire of our fury, with the mighty blaze of retribution.” His breath now came in fierce, halting pants, so ready was he to gouge, to burn. “He will know our will is true. He will know it in his heart.” 

“By Elbereth, gwanur,” Elrohir urged, with feeble patience. “No matter how basely Glorfindel has behaved, you must attempt even the most fragile mending before taking such a… a lethal charge. Even if you only make your grievance known to him… you must strike a truce both parties agree on.”

“Aiya, save your diplomacy for the White Council,” he bellowed, then again fell prey to misery. The guard-captain’s wound had struck him gut-deep; Elrohir had not afore realized just how perilously. 

With a cutting desperation, Elladan pleaded to him: “Elrohir… I must away. I must! Gwanur-nin, you have never known such a… it was a lie! I thought it true, he *made* me trust, he made me believe…two thousand years I waited, hoped, and it was all a lie…”

“We will go, shortly after dawn,” Elrohir conceded somberly. A winter-bleak realization come over him; no elf, man, or other thing in the entirety of Arda could ever comfort his wronged brother. “I will prepare Ada. I will say nothing of your sorrow, merely that we wanted to spare him the knowing until after the ceremony. Do you think Glorfindel might…?”

“He will not protest,” Elladan replied morosely. “He would not dare oppose me, after… I will wait the dawn with Nena. She will require our comforting, and will wish to bless us.”

“I will join you there, my brave one,” Elrohir agreed, as he helped his weary brother to his feet. Once there, he hugged his beleaguered twin tightly to his chest. “You are the dearest soul I have known, Elladan. He does not for the briefest of instants deserve the love you have so carefully borne for him. I hope, in time, he will come to know a lover’s pain, as you have known and suffered it, for so many years. But you, nin bellas, you do not bear it alone. You will never be alone, my dearest one.” 

Elladan rested his throbbing head on his twin’s solid shoulder, praying to Elbereth for the strength to bear through this. 

* * * 

The callous haze of a blood-red dawn hung above the violet-dark Bruinen, as the Lords, Kings, and masters of elfdom gathered in the courtyard to send off the valorous twin sons of Elrond. Erestor coolly eyed the crimson cloud-line, his prim features contorted with bitter resignation. 

The curtains of his chamber flushed with a rose glow upon his waking just hours before. He had curled himself into Haldir’s silken backside and judged their betrothal favorable to the Valar. Haldir himself did not believe in omens, had indeed promptly declared so, but Erestor had been Loremaster too long to dismiss any gentle glimpse of Elbereth’s favor. 

Then Elrond’s clarion knock had struck the chamber door; their blessing smote to cinder by the revelation of his ashen face. 

At their quick breakfast, Glorfindel had suddenly appeared. At least, the ghost of the mighty Balrog-slayer had loomed at the table-end, the spirit that once blazed there so vaporous as to be completely imperceptible to the naked eye. Only Erestor’s keen memory held any lasting image, as none other acknowledged the guard-captain’s presence through some strange common consensus. Celeborn ate steadily, with learned reserve. Elrond himself bore no sign of the mirth he had rediscovered but the day before, though his staunch, resolute fortitude had re-emerged. Thranduil was typically self-involved, but even the perpetually-merry Legolas simply nibbled on his grain-wafer and sipped his oarberry juice, eyes studiously down. Were it not for the roving fingers Haldir kept sneaking between his thighs, Erestor would have found no pleasure in the impressive gathering. 

Now, as the same gloomy party - Arwen curiously excluded – watched the twins dismount beneath the glaring scarlet sky, Erestor could not refrain from weaving grateful fingers through Haldir’s own ever-steady hand. The blonde Galadhrim turned to wink at him, promising a lazy afternoon of anxiety-relief and of his most doting ministrations. 

Heartened, Erestor marked the twins. Only Elrohir betrayed the barest hint of desolation at their parting. Elladan stood straight, unbending and immalleable as pure mithril ore, his clever eyes almost relishing the discomfort they caused hollow Glorfindel. Something wicked had passed between them; Erestor was baffled by this behavior, but he would not allow the guard-captain to sleep tonight without some indication of what. Elrond, for his part, seemed wholly ignorant, perhaps willfully so, as he tenderly hugged both his brave sons. In this, Elladan betrayed some emotion, whispering a pledge into his father’s ear. Elrond held fast to the elder twin for a moment, his legs failing him. With typically measured strength, he soon righted himself, as the twins made their way down the receiving line. 

Elrohir saved his last words for Legolas, scooping the tiny elf up into his arms. 

“Weep if you must, pen-neth, for sorrow is righteous,” he murmured. “But do not mourn what you have not lost. We will, in the coming years, often journey to Mirkwood, to check on your progress and perhaps teach you some tricks of the Noldor. But you must swear me an oath, maltaren-nin.”

Legolas nodded intently, waiting on the elf-knight’s every word. 

“Learn your lessons well,” he counseled. “In lore, weaponry, strategy, diplomacy, and the like. Learn of all the peoples of this land, travel when you can, and defend your bounty well from the Shadow’s claw. Do this not for destiny, but for your own betterment. Do it with joy in your heart, even in trying times, for only through the grief of learning can you reap Arda’s ample blessings. Above all, be safe, nin bellas.” Legolas studiously drank in his wisdoms with furrowed brow, then, when he finished, hugged him fiercely. He, too, whispered something secret for the prince alone, at which Elrohir smiled softly. 

While this dulcet scene played out, and the elders’ attention was caught on it, Elladan faced down Glorfindel. His bold stare near-devoured the golden elf, whose stony reserve seemed to chip with every passing second. 

“We are well-joined, and well-matched, husband,” Elladan hissed to his ears alone, though Erestor did not fail to remark his tone. “I trust I have your blessing.” 

“You have it tenfold,” Glorfindel forcefully acknowledged, his voice mysteriously weakened. “I wish you nothing but glory, Elladan, the rewards of battle well won. I have never wanted other than your happiness.” 

“But our binding, husband, saw the fulfillment of my longest-held desires,” Elladan snipped, curdling the compliment – and veiled truth - with a serpent’s venom. “What glory could vengeance bring, when you are already won?” 

Glorfindel blanched, stunned silent, but nothing could have prepared him for Elladan’s next move. The elf-warrior gripped a fierce hand onto the back of his head, yanked him close, and summarily planted a thick-tongued kiss - ugly, salacious, and desperately wanton – on him. Elladan tossed him back, teeth clenched as if he’d just ripped the meat off a bone, and unleashed a glare of such ravaged heartache that Glorfindel’s eyes instinctively swelled. Sneering at his husband’s weakness, Elladan staggered back, mounted his waiting steed. 

The twins bowed solemnly, then raced off into the bleeding dawn. 

 

End of Part Three


	4. Innocence

Part Four

Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 2,555

As they led their steeds through the looming brume, neither twin dared speak. The cotton-thick fog hung low between the densely grown tree trunks of the nascent Mirkwood. The hostile landscape deadened their usual pace, exposing them to the harsher elements of a haunted forest’s nightscape, as well as to the preying eyes of lurking shadowspawn. The onerous scent of decay permeated the cloying smog, as the two elf-warriors trudged their way through the moist sludge of the only path. 

Even on the outskirts of Fangorn, the princes had never seen such trees: their trunks round and hardened as the ancient towers of Amon Sul, their bows as immovable as pillars of dwarven ore, their roots fat, yet gnarled as the fingers of the witches of Angmar. When Elrohir had cause to lead Virgor, his stallion, over a glade of fallen leaves, he’d cause to note that every one could serve as a bedroll. Even on this sliver of open path, not a beam of starlight could break through the double threat of branch-weave and murk. 

As the party slogged forward, through another barely penetrable range of moss-leeched roots, the crisp sweeps of a scythe pierced through the static night. Further on, the noxious, near-choking fumes of recent bloodshed assaulted them, moments before they came upon the corpse-strewn remnants of a battlefield. Though veterans of countless charges, the twins had never seen such mutilation: eyes gouged with freshly-broken twigs, skulls cracked on branch knots, skin scored by a flurry of arrowheads, limbs similarly half-ripped from their joint, spores of green, oozing blood mixing with that of elven hue, everywhere, everywhere…

A massacre of goblins, with a few brave elves lost in the din. 

In the distance, the rapturous lilt of an elven choir sounded. Part requiem, part lullaby, the beatific voices hovered just below the cloaking fog, luring the weary princes towards Thranduil’s stronghold. His brother but a formless shadow before him, the air a fugue of smoke and stench, Elrohir prayed the Sindar forces had lost precious few to these latest slayings. 

* 

Perched atop one of the few tree-stumps not mired in bloody grime, Legolas observed the proceedings with uncharacteristic quiet. Only with the most leaden reluctance, the result of his youngest son’s most relentless urgings and lightening-fast reasonings, had the Mirkwood king allowed him beyond the elf-city’s battlements. The father had had plentiful reservations, but the ruler’s wisdom had ultimately won out: how would his son be iron-willed in the face of true terror, if he’d never been exposed, even indirectly, to the trials of war? A deal had been struck; Legolas was never, even for the briefest of moments, to leave the sight of either of his elder brothers. 

Moments after his arrival, any defiance of his father’s command proved unconscionable. At such a tender age, the sights before him instantly overwhelmed. The sturdy Sindar folk worked tirelessly to anoint the corpses of the fallen with wheylax and shroud them in leaf-weave, his brother Luinaelin a somber chief among them. Mithbrethil manned the left handle of a giant scythe, which barely bit, despite hours of effort, into the bark of a murk-rotted tree, where the goblins had held out for weeks, waiting. A small choir had been assembled to soothe the aged oak, easing it into death, but the weirded tree’s voiceless howls quaked through each and every elven heart. 

Amidst this grief-burdened industry, Legolas sat, silent but rapt. How could Luinaelin, often so squeamish in pranks, corral his senses enough to calmly encase the bodies, the faces of some of his dearest friends, forever? How could Mithbrethil push on, with twice his normal strength, into the raw hide of the sapling he himself had planted, its anguished cries braising through his councilman’s chest? How could the gentle gardeners of their choir find voice among the ruins of their bravest archers? 

Awed by their example, Legolas curled his legs beneath him and let their manner teach him well.

Suddenly, in the midst of carrying a stray arm, Luinaelin froze. He swiftly turned, stilled, then peered into the darkness beyond the blue light of the glowlamps. Legolas’ sharp eyes caught the faint twining of his brother’s lips, as he opened a palm towards the blackness. A stallion, burdened with unfamiliar armor and a healthy saddle-pack, trotted into sight. The steed was clearly not one of their own, yet Luinaelin soon patted her with overt fondness. 

Legolas tensed, disquiet creeping over him as an army of stealthy, poisonous feeflies. Something curious, vaguely unsettling drew near, though the young elf knew not if he possessed the wherewithal to face it down. He felt suddenly feral with longing, as if no drink, no bread, no endless swim, field-length race, or heady mountain climb could sate him. Was he bewitched by some heathen’s spell? Was Luinaelin? Nothing he had ever encountered had wrecked such havoc within him, not his first orc kill, not his thunderstorm patrols, not even the news of his mother’s passing. He clutched meekly at his bow, waiting-out this unreasonable torment with eyes stuck on his now-smiling brother.

Two elf-soldiers emerged from the forest deep, their origins unknown to the youngest Mirkwood prince.

Before long, Mithbrethil had joined in their welcome, as well as Aerthlen the Loremaster and Brilucith, their father’s chief council. Warm embraces were exchanged with all. Who were these oddly dark-haired elves, and from where did they hail? Legolas had seldom journeyed to other elven lays, and these too long ago to be properly recalled. Had he himself perhaps encountered them before? They were fearfully unfamiliar, yet stirred such troubles within him…

Mithbrethil beckoned him over. Legolas nodded tersely, then leapt down to the grass. 

As he cautiously approached, he forced his rising discomfort aside, instead concentrating on the elves themselves. After clearing the labyrinth of goblin carcasses, the exactitude of their mirrored features came into view, thoroughly startling Legolas. The raven-haired elves were virtually indistinguishable; both possessed a regal quality, yet also a faint luxury to their undeniable beauty. Indeed, once close enough to truly absorb, the young elf found he could not pull his rabid eyes from them, so plentiful were their graces. Both, in their indivisible twinness, were equally attractive, but the one slightly to the rear of the other… in his sage gray eyes loomed a keen, luring flame, which so culled Legolas that his brother had to clamp a hand on his shoulder to moor him to his side. 

“Mae govannen, maltaren-nin,” the darkling elf greeted him. “My apologies for being so long away, but the troubles to the South have not slept these last unfavorable years.” His twin also bowed his greetings, but refrained from comment. Had he known him, as well? Who *was* this gallant elf?

“Legolas,” Luinaelin reproached him. “Do not tell me you have forgotten Imladris entire? You were so enamored of the Rivendell valley, Ada could hardly persuade you to leave with him!” 

“Do you not recall the Sons of Elrond?” Mithbrethil echoed. “Many years have passed, but you took such glee in recounting your exploits upon your return. Surely, you’ve not forgotten Elladan and Elrohir?” 

At the sounding of his betrothed’s name, Legolas gasped quite audibly. He planted his widened eyes firmly in the ground, his cheeks flaring. Though his elders’ affectionate laughter trilled around him, the young prince had no sharp rebuts for them, his mind plagued by an assault of long-denied memories. Horseplay on the banks of the Bruinen, tuck-ins at night in his first-very-own chamber, the merry feast following the binding ceremony, their final walk among the summer birches… the unexplained agony of their parting, Legolas too young to fully comprehend this jarring severance from one so dear. His promised mate, Ada had confessed years after. /Elrohir, Prince of Imladris./

The bent knuckles of tender fingers came under his chin, then lifted up for him to meet patient, glowing eyes. 

“Plentiful are the Valar’s blessings in you, pen-neth,” Elrohir beamed at him. “How long until your majority?” 

/Would he be bound so soon?/ Legolas feared. “But a fortnight, kind sir.”

Elrohir could not help a brief chuckle, then laid a warm, easy hand on his shoulder. “Please, name me Elrohir. Merely a fortnight!! Then we may take some rest. Aye, I am glad of it, for we have seen little peace these last forty-some years, young Legolas.” At the voicing of his name, the princeling visibly shuddered. Elrohir, noting his unease, bent to whisper to him. “I come bearing a message from Lorien, pen-neth, not for your hand. Though I hope there may be time for us to spar. Your fluency with the bow is swift becoming legendary.” Legolas’ cheeks swelled further, the darkling elf’s mere presence causing unfamiliar and uncommonly intense feelings to spring forth. “Will you not escort us to your Adar?” 

“It would please me greatly,” Legolas replied tentatively, not trusting even his own voice in the presence of the stirring Prince of Imladris. 

When he turned about to guide them, Elrohir’s hand fell from his shoulder. Legolas felt he had never truly known cold, until that very moment. 

* * *

“He has known little sorrow, in his short time,” Thranduil boasted, as they settled around the desk of his study. “His mother’s passing, surely, but he was not two years old when that calamity struck. This last attack has affected him deeply, though he is far too self-possessed to admit this… not unlike his father.” The elf-king’s laugh boomed through the closely-held room, almost toppling the twins’ sturdy ederwood armchairs. Elladan stifled a laugh of his own. “He burst in here, demanding he be allowed to fight, then later, demanding to help in the recovery of the fallen.” 

“He is brave, and strong,” Elrohir commended. “This, he cannot hide.” 

Thranduil paid his comments little mind, choosing a different tact. “I have followed your wishes to the letter, he had never felt the burden of your betrothal. Indeed, I have only recently reminded him, in passing. He has been, as per our agreement, free to roam. Though I hear little of such matters, I wonder if he’s thought of else but his training, as there are no maids even somewhat close to his age and the code of Mirkwood soldiers is rather strict on this matter. No elfling should abase himself with lovemaking before his majority, if he is to prove an obedient and clear-minded archer of Mirkwood. He is chaste as a springtime bud, you have my word of honor.”

At this, Elladan visibly cringed; imagining, no doubt, Elrond’s face in Thranduil’s stead and reeling from the shame this vision unconsciously provoked. 

Elrohir, for his part, smiled fondly. “It was a happy coincidence, our journey North, nothing more. Though it pleases me to feast his majority, and to take some company with him. But I have no designs, at present, on strengthening our bond. He is still free.” 

“But your arrival is most timely!” Thranduil interjected, easily dismissing Elrohir’s cautious diplomacy. “At the time of a Mirkwood elf’s majority, there is no feasting, no ceremony. He must simply find one to instruct him in the act of love. For one night, or forever, there is no quarrel with either circumstance. And you, his betrothed, resting here! I note the scent of opportunity…” 

At this, Elrohir blanched white as Galadriel’s robes, oblivious to both Thranduil’s roar of approval and Elladan’s unguarded snickers. 

“But, Majesty,” Elrohir coughed, his throat suddenly raw. His befuddled mind did not know which he longed for more, the golden prince allowed his freedom or writhing with pleasure beneath him. For an absent moment, both held their allures… /Aiya, this is madness!/ “Surely Legolas has another in mind…”

“Which other?!” Thranduil snorted, letting it be known his will was quite often rule in these parts. “The simpering Elostren, an ox-hearder? The ancient Bellanewen, with her dance of the five barrow-leaves? Those pansy-feet in the choir? Should I send for that renown swordsmith Haldir, or perhaps your Adar’s own emissary, the ageless guard-captain Glorfindel, newly arrived this very morn?” 

With a strangled grunt, Elladan too paled to ghosting. Ever-cunning, he soon colored near-crimson with rage, eyeing Thranduil as he would a pack of drooling Wargs. “You would speak so callously of my husband, *majesty*?” 

The Mirkwood King took his own turn at skin-whitening. 

“I forget myself,” he awkwardly apologized. “The perils of age. And I, at your very binding!! Well, you will be heartened by this news. My servant, Serath, will later guide you to his talan.”

“I am grateful for your… kindness,” Elladan all but whispered, the reality of the situation hitting home. “I long to…” /What? Wring his neck?/

“As for the present matter,” Thranduil would not be distracted. “I cannot conscience another instructing my son in the bedding arts, when his very betrothed sleeps near. I have given him the freedom agreed upon, and on your parting, he will have it again. But now you must concede to my demands, if we are truly contracted in this, Son of Elrond. Be gentle with him, but be firm.”

Elrohir sighed, seeing no way out of this abomination. /If only my desires matched my will, in this./ 

“You have my word, Thranduil King,” Elrohir confirmed mirthlessly. “I will give him his majority.”

From his seat, Elladan felt relief sweep over him. His twin, in his justified anxiety, did not recognize the opportunity before him, the one he himself spoke of years ago, to fashion the lover of his choice. Elladan did not doubt for the briefest of seconds that Elrohir would prove the most gentle, tender, and considerate lover the young prince may ever have. His charms were as well renown in the Rivendell valley as his diplomatic skills; Elladan was sure Legolas was not the first elf his brother had introduced to the love act. Still, the elf-warrior understood his true concern: that a love act does not automatically lead to real loving. /Would that I had had such a chance with my own beloved. Perhaps things would not have soured so…/ 

When they were once again in their own counsel, Elladan resolved to mention this potent fact to his noble twin.

* 

Later, after Mithbrethil had finished his tour of the compound, the twins finally stole a minute for themselves. He had left them by the Hall of Armor, which housed a collection of weaponry unparalleled in Arda. Elladan paid special attention to the ancient crossbows, fat-bellied swords, and serrated daggers that hung about, each bearing their county’s coat of arms. Elrohir, still reeling from their meeting with the eccentric elf-king, followed close behind.

“Curious, is it not,” Elrohir remarked with a playful smirk. “That their library is the size of Erestor’s closet, but the armory is in its own separate talan.” 

“Perhaps in Mirkwood,” Elladan argued, with a wryness of his own. “Lore and letters help little, when the siege is so fierce, and so constant.” 

Elrohir frowned at this, but conceded the point. “Well reasoned, gwanur.” 

“I have been known, when the occasion arises, to be reasonable,” Elladan grinned in response. 

“Hardly,” Elrohir snorted, and received a swat for his obstinacy. “Perhaps we should speak on it with Glorfindel.” The elf-knight felt the air chill at the mention of his twin’s scorned husband. 

Elladan, however, betrayed no anger at his brother’s stealth attack. He halted before a spear of such enormity neither elf could imagine one able to bear its weight, let alone launch it. The head was coarsely smelt, to incur the greatest damage, with welts to keep in extra pools of poison; the base ornately carved with yasbrinth blooms. The spear of Glorfindel the Balrog-Slayer, at Gondolin. 

“You have led us here,” Elrohir noted, wondering at his troubled twin’s intent. 

“Aye,” Elladan acknowledged. “I knew Thranduil kept it, but I have never known the cause. Such precious bounty, to be entrusted to one so… hostile, in his regard for his Noldor brothers. Glorfindel is so often sent to Mirkwood… He bartered the peace between our peoples. He brought word, to Ada, of your proposed betrothal with Legolas…” 

Elrohir himself grew cold at this implication, turning to his brother in his shock. “You do not think…?”

“I do not *think*, gwanur,” Elladan murmured, the gravity now weighing him. “As I have said, I, too, have some powers of reasoning. Of deduction. When there is such evidence…” 

Elrohir sighed, the long day’s sights and discoveries threatening to overwhelm him. First, the slaughter of the Mirkwood guard, then Thranduil’s crazed manipulations, now this black news for Elladan… Over their now forty-five years of questing, Elrohir had become the guard-captain’s reluctant champion, urging his brother to put aside past differences and at the very least reveal the depth of his feelings to him. Their fleeing after the binding-night had done no bit of good: Glorfindel had not chased after them, Elladan would not waver on this issue, and neither had spoken since that ominous morn. Yet, no matter how many legions of orcs he slew or Warg-packs he skinned, Elladan could not exorcise the memory of Glorfindel’s betrayal. He lived it now as if he’d never left Imladris, viscerally, continuously, without relief or respite. 

Elrohir exhaled measuredly, then once again took up the guard-captain’s gauntlet. 

“There is some evidence,” he began. “But of little consequence if Glorfindel himself has not confessed to it.” 

“You think he would confess it?!” Elladan grunted, his blood instantly up. 

“Perhaps there is nothing to confess,” Elrohir suggested, at his own peril. “Perhaps near fifty years of an empty bed have given him cause to repent.”

“Forgiveness will take another fifty,” Elladan grumbled mercilessly. “Fifty and five hundred more.” 

“A small price,” Glorfindel announced himself, emerging from around a far corner. “For such hurt as I have caused you, Elladan.”

Both startled twins recoiled immediately, Elrohir moving protectively in front of Elladan. They both, on a deeper instinct, bowed in deference, so astonished at his appearance that they forgot themselves grown, or familiar. Glorfindel took no pleasure in their awkwardness; indeed, where a build-up of hope had lingered, sadness now reigned at seeing his two former charges shrink from him as they would from an enemy. He had so longed to be reconciled with them, but the reality of that process would seem to prove equally painful. 

Unsure of how to begin, he opened his arms. 

“Please, my dear ones,” he explained. “I did not mean to surprise. I encountered Mithbrethil in the corridor, and he informed me of your arrival here. I wanted only to… resolve our differences, or, at the least, call a truce for the time being.” 

Elrohir glanced over at his beleaguered twin, whose chest heaved with unrestrained emotion. Perhaps the reconciliation he had wished for would not be so long awaited. 

“I have no quarrel with you, Glorfindel,” he stated calmly. “I honor you as my tutor and guardian, as always. I hope we will have occasion to converse, as in older times, during our stay.” He turned back again to study Elladan, who looked on Glorfindel as if a tormenting ghost, or vengeful spirit, then made a quick decision. “Our way has been rife with conflict. I am weary. I shall retire to my chamber.” He bowed again, not waiting for approval. He then faced his twin outright, nodding to indicate his availability, if later necessary. The elf-warrior did not acknowledge him, but Elrohir knew he had understood. 

After his twin had departed, Elladan felt curiously more at ease, similar to the calm that descended upon him before battle. Even the most innocent skirmish was a test of wills, which combatant had the stamina to outlast the other, mentally more than physically. He had long prepared himself for this raw encounter, more so than any other fight he had engaged in; moreover, Elladan saw no possibility for his own defeat. He had already lost everything. 

He straightened his posture, fixing his husband’s pale visage in his sights and peering down his perfectly aquiline nose at him. He waited for the overture. 

“It is shameful, on my part, that coincidence reunites us,” Glorfindel admitted. “I have not kept my promise… the very one that kept me from you-… from your bed. To protect you.” Elladan did not move an inch, his face a mask of arrogant indifference. “I know you do not feel the need of my protection.” 

“What I feel, o mighty Balrog-slayer, has never seemed to be of much concern,” Elladan snipped. 

“That isn’t so,” Glorfindel declared, sounding hollow even to himself. “Elladan…”

Elladan visibly rolled his eyes, unimpressed with this scattershot display. “What is it you wish to tell me, Glorfindel? That you are sorry I’ve been hurt? I care not. That you have trysted in my absence and now know only my heart will satisfy you? Prove it. Come with me, to my bed, with words of love, and prove yourself my husband, and then I will hear of apologies, and regrets, and weakness. Then I will truly have what you are, for I will know that I am loved as a husband, not the elfling you will not put out of mind.” The elf-warrior marched up to him, his sly, inviting eyes boring imperiously down. “Will you come, then?”

“*Elladan*,” Glorfindel mused. “Would that every quarrel be so carelessly resolved.”

“That’s excrement,” he dismissed. “Your answer, please.” 

“Forty-five years, we’ve been apart!” Glorfindel exclaimed, his manner chafing. “Have you nothing else to say but come to bed? Is this your all-purpose resolution for conflict off the battlefield, denigrate and conquer?”

Losing the last of his patience with this cursed diplomacy, Elladan launched himself forward and dug a brute fist into the chest of his tunic.

“You are no judge of mercy, Balrog-slayer,” he snarled. He tempered a moment, but did not release him, his mithril eyes shimmering with sorrow. “Would you know of my misery? Of night upon night of self-abasement? Am I not wise enough, strong enough, fair enough, did I not learn my lessons well? Am I so coarse, so loathsome a creature that mine own husband will not lie with me? I have known the Shadow’s black urgings, so tempting in my nights of lust that I near gave myself to them. Do you not know how the Nazgul came to being? Have you not heard their wretched cries? The black riders gallop through my very dreams, taunting me, tormenting me!” For that breathless moment, he indeed seemed the nightmare-plagued child of years passed. “Where were you, husband, that should keep them from my dreams? Where were you whose love should fill me so completely that not a drop of their hate could pour in?” Recovering himself, he threw him back, standing, at once, and demanding again. “That is the toll of it. Now. *Will. You. Come*?

His eyes alight with the all-too-keen knowledge of this insight, Glorfindel could not falter.

“I cannot, meleth.”

Elladan nodded, once, then seemed to shrink into himself. After he bowed in deference, he continued his path through the armory, as if not a moment of their meeting had transpired. 

 

* * *

Alone, possibly for the first time in years, on the archery grounds, Legolas aimed, drew, and fired. 

Another day, another hit. 

Despite their age, experience, and unquestioned prowess, few of the other soldiers could match his skill. His Nena had claimed him born under a special star, the brightest in the heavens. Before her death, she’d often recounted the tale of mighty Earendil and his claiming of the silmaril, which nightly shone above. At the least, it had shone when the Mirkwood was not plagued by goblin smog. Without this timely star to guide him, Legolas had felt abruptly severed from his mother’s watchful eyes; he had often imagined her at the prow of the Foam-flower beside valiant Earendil, her patient, guarding gaze beaming down through the silmaril’s ethereal glow. 

The sky had been covered by cloud ever since the Shadow’s raid, since the night of the arrival of the princes of Imladris. Legolas had not slept soundly, or felt truly well, from then on.

He knew of no word to name his troubles, nor way to right them. When kind Elrohir was near, his body burned with a heat no fire could match, causing him to fidget, fumble, disgrace himself to a level of embarrassment he had never known before, his head light yet heavy all at once. He spilled his drink, near-choked on a timid mouthful, and rambled on aimlessly until even he himself knew not the matter that launched him off. Elrohir bore it all with infinite poise and compassion, which shamed him all the more. The elf-knight had come North to know him in his maturity, but Legolas could not evidence a wit of it, despite his most ardent longings. 

And to speak of longing! The young prince had never known so many, or these of such vociferous demand, in all his – admittedly few – years. Longing to be close to Elrohir, to sit at his side in discussion, or lay beside him in contemplation of the lazy night, to feel an approving glance across a banquet table, or battlefield, or bathing hall. Longing to touch… no, he could not linger on this, the most unsettling of all his warped emotions. Soldiers did not touch one another as Legolas longed to touch Elrohir, and what would such a heralded warrior think of the mere contemplation of such an act? Though he had not even laid eyes on the darkling elf for over two days, Legolas lowered his bow, his fingers mercilessly trembling. 

When the moon was gone, the dreams had come. Thick, enveloping dreams such as he’d never experienced before, full of baying wolves, bogs of unctuous mud, dank caves wretched with blasts of steam that licked salaciously over him and roused every pore of his skin. He would wake, groggy, sticky, no more rested than if he’d run straight from Mirkwood to Imladris proper, his stomach and his inner-thighs swollen tender, his… well. He had heard of such… problems occurring as an elf reached his majority, but hadn’t even the vaguest clue of how - or, for that matter, whether at all - to broach the subject with his brother or friends. 

He often hoped some urgent business would call the twins away, thus ending his discomfort. He also lived in terror that, with his wishing, this might actually come to pass, and Elrohir would be gone. Legolas raised his bow anew, fired off a quiver’s worth of rounds, hitting every target before him at dead center. 

At the peal of a praiseful whistle, the princeling whipped around. There stood Elrohir, dully impressed. 

“Your father’s heralds ring hollow in the face of your talent,” Elrohir complimented. Legolas smiled, deeply affected by this one proof of his agility, before he reminded himself he would not be able to best it now. Elrohir strolled casually up to his side, unsheathing his own bow. “May I?”

“Please,” the young elf replied, his desire to observe the elf-knight’s skill momentarily overwhelming the tremors that had begun. 

Elrohir surveyed the field with a hawkish glare, mentally tallying the number of arrows spent and the marks struck. His smirk betrayed a glint of teeth. He winked knowingly at Legolas, then shot off a constant, consistently elegant stream, until each and every arrow-blade had been dug out and usurped, replaced by one of his own. The darkling elf paused to appraise his work, then smiled outright. 

Legolas, in total, utter awe, couldn’t speak. 

“Come,” Elrohir beckoned, gesturing him towards the shaded base of a nearby elm. “I would seek your counsel.” 

His head still stuck on the archery field, the young prince ambled dully after him, not noting the change of scenery until they were well-settled beneath the tree. As he turned, then, to meet Elrohir’s welcoming eyes, the world seemed to fade out of view. Curiously, he felt none of his earlier awkwardness, though the heat that suffused his dreams began to flow rapidly through him, to dizzying effect. He laid back on the tree trunk, content to while the day away in contemplation of the Imladrian prince’s mithril eyes. /Aiya, they *are* of mithril hue! Had I remarked on that before? I have never been… so close./

“Tell me, Legolas,” Elrohir began. “Are you anxious for your majority? Do you welcome it, or does it… I can’t imagine much of anything worries you, but…?”

“It is but the beginning of my journey,” the young prince responded. “I have another fifty years to reach my true majority, and become an elf of proper responsibility. I have so many guardians… I do not doubt my road will be lessened, if not eased, by their counsel.” 

“You are blessed, in this regard,” he noted. 

“Aye, I know it,” Legolas admitted, wondering at the other’s intent. He dared not ask it, not wishing to offend the prince with impudence. 

“And what do you know…” Elrohir halted a moment, unsure of how to breech this particularly sensitive topic. /Well, if we are to soon share intimacy, then we must quicken our relations somewhat./ “…of the rites that take place, on the night of an elf’s first majority?” 

At this, the heat rose, unbidden, to Legolas’ cheeks. His busy aquamarine eyes dipped resolutely into his lap; he swiftly clasped his quivering fingers together, though there was no hiding them from Elrohir. Until that moment, Legolas had given little to no thought to the occurrence of said rites, as no elf of Mirkwood caught even the barest glimmer of his interest in that regard. They were all old, too learned or too dull. He wanted someone with passion, someone… it struck him, then, the purpose of these questions, and even as he fiercely desired to bury his flaming, woozy head in the ground, he began to evidence the very unmentionable result of a night’s tousled dreams. He fidgeted in his seat to loose the fall of his tunic, but still could not bring himself to answer this very patient, very kindly inquiry.

Elrohir recognized this bashfulness for what it was, as well as the need beneath. 

“Your father has spoken to you of our betrothal?” he asked anew, with utmost gentility. 

“Aye,” came the near-voiceless reply. 

“On the day of our promising,” he explained. “My Ada required of yours one immovable stipulation, before he would agree to our proposed binding. That we would be free to explore, to indulge in other lovers, should either of us be tempted, before our joining. I believe readily in that right, Legolas, know this of me. If there is another with which you wish to perform the rite of first majority… or any other you wish to… couple with, at any time, then I give my most profound consent.” 

Legolas considered this a moment, somewhat surprised by the turn of events. Had he displeased him? Perhaps his ungainly fumblings had turned his stomach, perhaps he no longer wished to be promised to such an unsightly, unmannered weakling? Ada would roast him alive for this misstep… or worse, force them to marry, when Elrohir did not want… 

Unbidden, his eyes moistened, but Legolas held fast. He must have proof of this displeasure, before committing an even more embarrassing blunder. But how to phrase it?

“D-do you… do you no longer wish to….?” Legolas stammered. 

Elrohir blinked, surprised at the young prince’s desperate tone. 

“I do not wish to pressure you, maltaren-nin,” he answered with extreme care. “But I would… It would be my greatest pleasure to guide you, in this. If that is what *you* desire.”

“Aye,” Legolas sighed, his chest heaving with relief. “V-very much so…” 

He chanced to lift his eyes, just then, to meet those stunning mithril orbs. Elrohir, unbeknownst to him, had come quite close, so much so that Legolas could feel his breath on his neck. His gaze had grown pensive, as if in contemplation of some righteous profundity. After tucking a stray hair behind the princeling’s ear, a soft smile crept over Elrohir’s full mouth, so close Legolas found he could not quite catch his quickening breath. 

“So beautiful,” Elrohir whispered, cupping a hand over the edge of his jaw and turning his face towards him. “Have they praised your beauty, Legolas, these hearty Sindar folk? Perhaps overpraised it? Sung it in tunes, choirs, dirges, anything to sing of your shimmering graces?” His flush deepened at this unwarranted praise, but Legolas found he could not look away. Elrohir brought his lips to the princeling’s temple, continuing to whisper his hot breath against now-baking skin. “Do you even know of your beauty, meleth? Do you know there is none in all of elfdom to match your immaculate rendering?” 

Legolas shook in earnest now, the darkling elf’s words bringing the heat that coursed through him to a slow-boil. Though his limbs felt light as if their bones were liquid, he circled his arms around Elrohir’s solid middle, as much to steady his furious head as to tighten their embrace. Then, as if he had strayed into one of his infernal dreams, Elrohir brushed a first, tremulous kiss over his lips. 

Legolas swooned, opened his mouth to him, the near-blindsiding rush of feeling causing him to sink further into Elrohir’s arms. He abandoned every bit of shame, or awkwardness, or anxiety, now safely held by the knowledge that his elf-knight kept him, would teach him, would love him. 

For Legolas had found the words, had named the feeling at last. 

Gently, Elrohir withdrew, breaking their deeper kiss with airy, teasing flutterings over his cheeks, his nose, his brow. The elder elf leaned back against the tree, allowing Legolas to rest his spinning head on his shoulder, curl up to him. As long as the younger elf appeared untroubled, he felt no need to speak. Legolas, for his part, relished this lovely intimacy, still reeling from the waves of unbound feeling sweeping through him. He felt, all at once, not a lick of shame and deeply, intensely curious as to what, if anything, came next. What else could their bodies do in such harmony of spirit? What other pleasures awaited? Legolas had never considered any of these matters before. Feeling centered enough to look upon the tender prince, he eased open his eyes, only to be treated to a view down the length of the elf-knight’s sinuous frame. There, atop his legs, he noticed a similar…

“Elrohir?” he queried, with infectious curiosity.

“Aye, meleth,” came the rasping reply. Elrohir knew he must hold his true desires until the night of Legolas’ majority, but, at the moment, the task seemed insurmountable. 

“May I ask you something… that perhaps I should know… but that I do not?”

“Always, maltaren-nin. You must promise me this.”

The heartened young prince dully forswore: “I will. I promise.”

“Very well,” Elrohir smiled at him, unable to resist twisting a lock of his flaxen hair through his nimble fingers. “Your question?” 

Legolas grinned sheepishly, then soldiered on. “Why does….?”

The innocence, and unexpected charm, of the eventual inquiry was enough to put off even the most raging desire, as, indeed, it did. 

 

End of Part Four


	5. Tryst

Part Five

Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 2,555

As a sheer, pearlescent beam of Ithil’s pale cast broke through the cloud cover, Legolas raised his eyes to the patch of indigo sky. Above, nearly astride the moon, the dauntless silmaril rode the black heavens, thus reminding the young elf of his mother’s ever-presence, over him and always in his heart. 

This past fortnight, there had been little room there for other than Imladris’ kindly elf-knight, though the prince’s heart had simply opened further to accommodate its growing population. Perhaps the memory of his mother’s grace had needed to retreat these last few days, that he may better focus on welcoming his promised one. Elrohir was, indeed, warmly welcome, so much so that Legolas could not bear the thought of his leave-taking. Yet two nights only stood between this moment and their parting, one of which would see them veiled in the gauze of intimacy: the rites of his begetting day. 

Their consumption for naught, as Elrohir would the following morn depart for lands unknown. 

Legolas curled his legs into the seat of his armchair, eyes full with the cool gray moon. After their first, heady embrace on the archery field, Elrohir had each day devised a shared activity for them: hunting, sword-training, swimming, an evening stroll, or a round of gaming with their brothers. The elf-knight, blessed with keen diplomacy, was also a knowing strategist, usurping the holdings of even the miserly Thranduil in the Battle Game. Legolas took a lesson from the prince’s every move, in sport or in earnest conversation, as Elrohir considered even the most casual of his questions of value. The young prince himself took time to ponder every insight, often returning with further, more complex inquiries, which Elrohir raptly engaged. Often as not, their hours together passed as sand through his fingers, not a moment waited upon or wasted.

At last, their talk would run its course, or Elrohir would regard him in such a way as to stun him silent, or he himself would become so ensorcelled by the darkling prince that he forgot himself. Regardless of circumstance, one would ease into the other’s embrace, into the lazy rhythm of tender, thrilling kisses. Although ever intent, during the peerless heat of these caresses Elrohir never surrendered as Legolas did. Though his stormy eyes often betrayed him, he nevertheless guarded the young prince’s chastity with ironclad vigilance, for which Legolas immeasurably esteemed him. At times. 

His restless glare swept down from the heavens, landing on the window of the talan across the courtyard. Was it merely Serath’s black humor or one of Ada’s dull machinations that selected these all-too-visible chambers for Elrohir? There his betrothed now sat, sipping some strange copper liquid and conversing with the amiable Glorfindel, while Legolas was left to his own turgid devises on this night before his majority. He dug into the pocket of his robe, then extracted an small, empty bottle, laced with the barest traces of an unctuous amber salve. In one of their early, frank discussions of the realities of physical love, Elrohir – open to even the most intimate of inquiries - had detailed the ‘practical’ uses of self-pleasure and had gifted him the then-brimming bottle. Yet so ardent had been his explorations, not a stirring, loam-scented drop was left. 

Reason enough, perhaps, to interrupt them? Reason enough to linger after Glorfindel had taken his leave, and take a night early what he had begged for and been denied that very afternoon, beneath the one, shading willow by the far gate? 

Under the blessing light of his mother’s star above, Legolas knew his mind. 

* * * 

“You ought perhaps return for springtime,” Glorfindel noted, two fingers lifting his goblet from the side-table and resting the silver base on his lap. “There may yet be another binding. Haldir is mending swiftly, under Erestor’s care.”

“I’ve no doubt,” Elrohir smirked wryly. “But tell me, dear captain, how did the fearsome Galadhrim come to recover in Imladris, when the journey alone could prove perilous?” 

Though the elf-knight meant the playful query in jest, Glorfindel’s cobalt eyes darkened considerably. “If he had not made the journey…” His sudden, blunt sobriety told the tale. 

“He was not truly wounded, then?” Elrohir questioned, without trace of mirth. 

“In his fea, meldir,” Glorfindel murmured. “In his soul.” 

“And what of his father’s objections?” he inquired further. “Are they reconciled?”

“Perhaps, in time,” he sighed, suddenly reminded of his countless spars on the subject with his fellow guard-captain. “He cannot help but face it, now.” Elrohir nodded thoughtfully, took another gentle sip of miruvor. Their Sindar hosts had little appreciation for the sweet, fermented cider, so Glorfindel had been more than eager to share both his private store and a quiet moment with the young elf-knight. 

Their negotiations in Mirkwood had been fraught, tumultuous, Thranduil often abandoning the table in a rage. The King’s rampant war-mongering among the Northern lands was threatening trade routes. Despite the obvious, imminent threat to the Mirkwood, the elders of both Lorien and Imladris felt that the elven people must stay the course. Though war would soon be upon them, the signs remained vague as to the nature of their charge, of their chance for survival. Mithrandir was only beginning to set his plan in motion; he challenged that some of the major players in the conflict were not even born. Elrond had not yet set his own mind to the proper course, Celebrian’s departure still heavy on him, but he knew the Gray Pilgrim’s way to be just. Galadriel, too, was decided. Only Thranduil remained – in this the most vital, and most deceitful, arm of their combined forces.

“And what maid would he have him bed?” Elrohir snorted bitterly, his blood up at the thought of Haldir lost to grief out of misplaced paternal devotion. “There are none as strong, as learned in the healing arts and as regarded among our people as Erestor!! None that are not already promised…”

“Your sister was promised,” Glorfindel countered pointedly. “I told Elrond the deception was folly, worthy of… well. Best not besmirch the name of our goodly host.” 

“Not in Mirkwood, at the least,” Elrohir mused, still burnt. /Legolas must be possessed by his mother’s grace./

“Then you are eager to take your leave of the once-great Greenwood?” Glorfindel queried, all practiced wide-eyes and innocence. 

“Mirkwood is vile,” Elrohir did not hesitate to answer, disregarding the implicit taunt. “How such a blooming nation can survive the gloom… perhaps I do not justly credit Thranduil.” 

“Does the nation bloom before your eyes?” the guard-captain teased outright. “Or merely its newest citizen?” 

Elrohir grunted audibly, downed another mouthful. “I will have no peace, I see, if I do not answer you.” 

“None at all,” Glorfindel admitted, his lips wickedly twined. “I am but… intrigued, by the playing out of this proposed union. You were both so young, when betrothed…”

“You contested the match.”

“I did.” 

“Erestor has often remarked upon this,” Elrohir commented. The darkling elf turned inward, unsure of how best to play-out the presentation of the past week’s discoveries, and admitted delights, before his opposed guardian. Indeed, had he been told afore of the changes Legolas’ gracious, ever-curious company would incur in him, he would not have given the bearer of such prophetic news the least of credence. This, however, would hardly satisfy sharp Glorfindel, whose temerity had nearly broken Elladan but days ago. This knowledge, though presently put aside in the name of indulgence, also cautioned him.

Then, a knock at his chamber door. 

Glorfindel, across from him, tensed visibly, thinking the intruder to be his humbled twin. Elladan, however, would not have bothered announce himself… but what other would join them at such a late hour? Perhaps there was further mischief from the looming Shadowspawn. Decided, Elrohir rose, then padded over to the door, careful to draw the curtain between reception area and entranceway. 

Impatient, ethereal Legolas had already crept into the room. 

“Here’s a most welcome intrusion,” Elrohir called to him, then slipped his arms around the slender frame. After smoothing the prince’s wrought brow with noisy, vigorous kisses, he bent to catch his soft mouth, drawing deeply. At their parting, Legolas sighed intently. “Did sleep prove elusive on your begetting-eve, meleth?” 

“Somewhat,” Legolas noted mysteriously, peering over his shoulder. “May I join you?” 

Elrohir blinked sagely in response, then led him on. With a wry wink at the guard-captain, he offered the young one the end of his lounging-chair. Legolas tentatively perched on the edge, shyly acknowledging Glorfindel, but, once Elrohir had extended himself behind, he leaned back onto his limber legs and gathered his own onto the rich vermilion cushion. Elrohir had instructed his green charge that, though propriety must always be observed in company, the true lover never shied, or was shamed, by tempered displays of affection. Thus, though a faint blush tinted his cheeks, Legolas gathered up Elrohir’s nearest hand and clasped it between his own. 

“Are you troubled, pen-neth?” Glorfindel asked outright, himself troubled by the ease of this display. 

“No,” the prince shrugged, taking comfort in Elrohir’s appraising gaze upon him. When he could find no other answer, he spied the miruvor. “What is this drink? Or is it a tonic?” 

“Bittered cider, from the vineyards at Rivendell,” Elrohir explained. “Would you care for a sip?” 

“A brief one,” Legolas replied, noting Glorfindel’s scowl. “To taste, only.” Elrohir rose from his reclining to hand him his glass, stroked a calming touch over his back. Miruvor, when first sampled, often soured the palate to choking. 

Legolas, however, seemed immune to this, swishing the viscous cider over his tongue and swallowing without incident. His nose wrinkled in displeasure.

“Too thick,” he judged, as Elrohir lowered back to reclining, goblet in hand. 

“An acquired taste,” the elf-knight chuckled softly, eyes alight as swift mercury. “Which you may yet, as with other things, grow to acquire.” Legolas raised a doubtful eyebrow, but demurred. “Tell us, maltaren-nin, if you will, and honestly so… Glorfindel earlier remarked that those so young as we should not be so laxly matched by our elders, before the bolder shades of our character have come forth. Do you feel yourself encumbered by our betrothal? Did you feel your freedom stifled, at the news?” 

For a moment, Glorfindel seemed to growl beneath his breath at Elrohir’s impudence. Legolas wondered at his temper, thus staying his reply. Soon, however, the guard-captain himself beckoned. “Aye, pen-neth. Do tell.” 

The young princeling paused to form his words with care, then responded with measured confidence. 

“When first my Ada spoke of this alliance,” he confided. “I thought little of it, meaning that I never gave it mind. I did, at times, think on my majority, on my future binding, but only that there were none in Mirkwood I thought pleasing, or proper. I also thought… I knew that I do not favor… maids. This plight gave me weeks of concern, so in some ways news of my betrothal to a warrior… But then… suddenly, Elrohir and Elladan were arrived; indeed Elrohir himself was before me, and… I… I was afraid.” Elrohir squeezed the hands that held him, urging him to continue on. “At first, I feared that his manner would not befit the… his… his beauty. For I was… for he…”

“Aye,” Glorfindel acknowledged dully. “They are beautiful.” 

“Aye,” Legolas parroted, still trying to suss out the reason for Glorfindel’s stale attitude. “But I needed not fear. He is kind of heart, learned and agile, gentle…” Legolas turned, then, to regard Elrohir with a stare of such outright passion that both were suitably ensnared. 

“And what of tomorrow?” Glorfindel inquired roughly, after clearing his throat. “What do you know of the rites pushed upon you?” 

Without breaking their stare, Legolas whispered: “If it were not he, it would be another. But I would not that it be other than he. I would not evermore share myself with other than… than you, Elrohir.” 

As Legolas raised the darkling elf’s palm to his lips, Glorfindel wrenched his own hard stare away. The love they both so clearly felt, so newly, cleanly forged, would no doubt bear the begetting-night’s testing, perhaps even the test of time, such was its ardor. Yet its very fact challenged every notion he’d held on his own binding; that an elfling’s affections were not to be warped by politicking, or soothsaying, or even blinding lust. Could their grieving, overprotective fathers, in their blundering negotiations, have struck the perfect match? And what of his own frayed union? 

As if privy to his very thoughts, Elrohir now turned preying, curdled eyes on him. 

“What say you, brave captain, to this humble evidence?” he asked venomously, his true intentions in this pacifist’s banquet revealed. “Do you think him challenged? Naïve? Overwhelmed by indecision, inexperience, his father’s will? Do you feel him incapable of interpreting his own heart’s yearning? Or merely besotted by my esteemed beauty?” 

“But I *am* besotted,” Legolas insisted, voice rich with merriment. 

“Hush, meleth,” Elrohir instructed him, hawkishly observing Glorfindel’s discomfort. 

“You have no right to challenge me,” the Noldor balked, chafing. “Nor is there quarrel between us, by your own words.” 

“Words mean little in affairs of the heart,” Elrohir repliqued. “You know better than I, sage Glorfindel, that action speaks. And yours have been so injurious to my brother in all things under the blessed Valar, that I cannot let this pass without retort. I esteem your age, your experience, your position at Imladris’ court, Glorfindel. But I no longer honor you as friend and counsel.” With a drawn, weighted sigh, he withdrew the infliction of his wounded eyes. “Leave us.” 

Unsteady, Glorfindel rose. He coughed, once, but made no rebuttal. 

When the door shut behind him, Elrohir’s pained smile met the prince’s questioning eyes. “Forgive me, meleth, for making an example of you. I hope this does not sour things between us.” 

“It matters not,” Legolas dismissed, more concerned by Elrohir’s cloying distress. He stretched out along the length of him, resting his head on his lank arm. “He has harmed Elladan?” 

“He will not lie with him, though they are bound some forty year,” Elrohir elucidated, his distaste for the subject plain. “He believes him too… truly, I cannot see the reason of it. The trouble, I believe, lies not with Elladan at all, but with Glorfindel’s own deep-seeded fears.” Unwilling to linger on these troubles now that Legolas was near, Elrohir wove a tight embrace around him. “And you, maltaren-nin? Have you come to me, at last?” 

“You waited on me, Elrohir?” Legolas queried, the picture of innocence. “How did you…?”

The elf-knight indulged in a wry laugh. “I merely thought you might… seek me out, after our late day, by the willow… I admit I hoped you would.” 

“Did you… desire me, then?” Legolas asked, a definite archness to his lightened tone. 

“I did,” Elrohir confessed. “I *do*.” He bent to his lips anew, drawing thickly from them. “It would be cruel to depart so soon, so rashly after only a night’s coupling. I could not conscience such behavior, not against the lure of two nights indulgence in your bed, lirimaer.” 

Legolas, emboldened by this admission, met his sweet, waiting mouth in lieu of some overwrought reply. 

* 

As the hallowed light of the silmaril broke through the sinister, cloaking cloud-line above, a lecherous wind snaked through the windows of their talan and tongued thievishly at the flaming wicks of the lantern-scattered chambers. The two entwined elves stretched along the lounging-chair barely registered the dimming light, so intent was their amorous embrace. Only when Elrohir pulled back to shed the last of his burgundy tunic did the chill gusts braise him, sharp contrast to Legolas’ slick, baking skin. 

He pecked briefly at the princeling’s lazy smile, then rose to shut out the wind. 

Hours of rapt, generous kisses had lulled the young elf into a near-mesmeric state, Elrohir’s slow-culled warmth dissipating even the most vociferous tremor of anxiety. The blurred edges of his sculpted frame haloed by Earendil’s light, Legolas regarded his bold, beatific lover-to-be with unguarded reverence. He sank further into the stiff-brilled velour of the lounge cushion, his limbs airy-light, as if buoyed by the salty swells of a mineral bath. His skin, flush from brow to toe-tip, shone crystalline under the starlight. When Elrohir turned back to him, leaving the curtains fastened, Legolas caught the quicksilver streak of his irises amid the sweeps of night shade.

Soon those haunting eyes were upon him, as the darkling elf enveloped him anew. Elrohir smoothed his voluptuous lips across the dead-drop of his cheek, but would not take his mouth. 

“You look a wanton, meleth,” he murmured salaciously. “Are you well at ease?”

“Very well,” Legolas responded. 

“Are you still decided?” he questioned again, his charge’s continued comfort vital to the night’s playing-out. “Speak it now, if you would delay, for I will loose all reason at the sight of you unwound…”

Legolas gasped suddenly, as Elrohir cuffed his jaw-edge with the blunt of his teeth. Until then, the elf-knight’s patient ministrations had bathed him in a stream of sweet affection; now, the cunning thrall of eroticism beckoned, fierce and disorienting as the sea’s eventual call. Opulent, hazy want gripped him, firm as Elrohir’s hand dug in the soft of his inner-thigh. His brimming body longed to be rid of his loose shirt, his tight leggings… his cloying virginity. The steam-soak of Elrohir’s tongue down the length of his throat made his mind. 

“May we move…?” he queried absently, all thoughts centered on the nimble unlacing of his collar, the busy fingertips that teased him there. “Your bed…” 

“The chair does not please you?” Elrohir tarried his task, waiting on his answer. “Is there discomfort?”

“N-no,” Legolas stuttered, his inexperience staying him. “I merely thought it… more proper…?” Elrohir chuckled softly, unable to resist another kiss at such delicious indecision. 

“What do you desire, maltaren-nin?” the darkling elf inquired, giving and gentle. “Tonight, I am at the service of your pleasure alone. We shall move to the bed, if you so wish. But before, tell me. What might I perform that would please you most?”

“I… I do not know,” Legolas replied, near-voiceless. 

“What have you dreamed of?” Elrohir pressed on, tightening his hold on the raw princeling. “Surely you have dreamed of this…”

“Oh, aye,” Legolas agreed, finding his ease. “But I know not what might… be pleasing to us both. I would not your desires be forgotten.” A look of utter tenderness came over the elf-knight, so heartened that Legolas gained the courage to press on. “In my dreams, as you say, I… I long to please you, Elrohir. Always, I kneel before you and take… and, then, I lie back and you… I cannot speak of it, the mere thought is often my undoing! Only in your fulfillment… do I find my own.” 

“By Elbereth, I will treasure you for all my days, Legolas,” he swore, swallowing down a wave of overt emotion that would surely sunder his delicate preparation of the young elf. “Come, meleth. Come to bed.” 

Once they had unraveled their knotted limbs, both staggered to their feet, their muscles woozy, strange after such long lassitude. Hands dully clasped, cheeks rose with anticipation, Elrohir guided Legolas into the glow of his bedchamber, then stopped him before the foot of the open bed. He cupped the princeling’s budding face, his eyes shroud in itinerant shades of longing.

“Would you truly indulge my greatest desire, meleth?” he asked again, intent. 

“Aye, Elrohir,” Legolas assented, slightly anxious at the desperation of his tone. “As you wish.” 

“Remove your garments,” he ordered, almost beneath his breath. “Slowly, that I may…” His will made clear, he backed away, then sat tall on the indigo coverlet, eyes alight as mithril ore. 

Legolas smirked faintly. The request was simple enough; Elrohir’s gaze ever-tender, welcoming. He unlaced the last of his collar, then thought better of it and sprung the clasp of his hair. The elf-knight’s throat contracted. He leaned back onto one splayed hand, his wired body on display, as was the ripe bulge in his riding breeches. The young prince’s breath quickened, as he unwound his braids, letting the coiled locks loose over his shoulders. 

When their eyes locked, Elrohir nodded, urging him on. Legolas rid himself of his shirt, the motion flexing his taut pectorals, flaunting his rippled abdomen, and unveiling his own pillared endowment, which stretched the thin fabric of his leggings near to fraying. His breaths now came in short, ragged gasps, the air between them misting with tension. As the young elf struggled for control, Elrohir worked a steady hand over the front of his breeches, the bulge expanding into a broad, ready shaft. His own hands quaking mercilessly, Legolas, as instructed, slowly peeled down his leggings and kicked them off. 

He stood, bare and beautiful before the ravenous elf-knight. 

A secret smile curving his lips, Elrohir beckoned him forward, while he tugged off his own constricting breeches. Nearly undone by this first sight of him, Legolas swayed, steadied himself on Elrohir’s solid shoulder. He doubled over, burying his face in the crown of sleek, ebony hair and inhaling the heavy ederwood musk that marked him. Playful a moment, seeking to put Legolas entirely at ease, the darkling elf nestled his nose into the down of the princeling’s stomach and flicked a wicked tongue-tip over the wispy cornsilk hairs. Legolas giggled, sighed; any residual worry turned vaporous and lithe. Thusly distracted, Elrohir took solid hold of the prince’s wild, giddy hips and bent to lap at the creamy head of his engorgement. 

The resulting moan nearly deafened him. 

Almost dizzying himself with rolling, affectionate chuckles, he lowered the legless beauty onto the bed, then knelt to begin his most sensual learning.

* * * 

The sober revels ended, Glorfindel wafted down the spiral staircase as cloud-shade over an open plain, his black cloak billowing, wraith-like, behind him. His docile features ironed flat by practiced diplomacy throughout the cantankerous meal, dominated, as ever, by Thranduil’s arrogance and eccentricities; they now sagged beneath the weight of his ever-fractious preoccupations: duty, promise, and the true nature of guardianship. 

The non-occasion of a Sindarin begetting-day meal, though sparse of mirth, had been rife with unspoken meaning for the guard-captain, as if deliberately designed as life-lesson. Oblivious, or perhaps well-familiar, with his father’s pomposity, the golden flower of Mirkwood’s cold hollows had, on that humorless evening, acquitted himself beyond compare. Perched blithely at the King’s right hand, the prince wore the newly-ornate crown of his majority as if he’d been bequeathed his father’s throne. Staid, gracious, and ever-curious, Legolas had welcomed even the most obscurely titled well-wishers with infectious kindness, yet never detracted from Thranduil’s self-important spectacle of doddering might. Instead, the poised elf demurred from the more treacherous strains of conversation, only nodding indulgently at his family’s bold instructions for the coming night’s intimacy. That the prince was already thoroughly versed in such intimacies, Glorfindel held no doubt. With a mere glance in gallant Elrohir’s direction, his newfound experience was exposed, though none of Mirkwood-birth seemed to mark this, only Glorfindel himself. 

Adding further to his shame was the evidence of similar conclusions written, like a death-warrant, across Elladan’s hush face. Moments before the final service, the elf-warrior had voicelessly excused himself, then retreated down a passage unknown to the fraught guard-captain. A chain of echoing reactions followed: Elrohir tensed, but was stayed by his ever-diplomatic nature, Legolas became concerned at Elrohir’s unspoken distress, Luinaelin and Mithbrethil helplessly watched the drama unfold and prayed to Elbereth that Thranduil took no notice. Glorfindel himself had no choice but to linger on, but yet wondered what good could come of following his troubled husband. Another disagreement? A duel? Elladan had always been more sensibility than much-needed sense. 

Yet secretly, as he’d scoped the tableau of veiled foreboding before him, a subtle flaw in his diamond-clear beliefs on the matter began to torment him. By the time he’d at last seen fit to politely withdraw, his beleaguered mind raged with agonizing deliberation. Had he been wrong to flee Imladris centuries ago, under pretence of protecting his dear charge’s virtue? Would Elladan have thusly flourished, had Glorfindel deflowered him? Elrond, surely, would never have consented to such a formative act… yet Elrond himself had approved their binding years later. His Lord and age-old friend was noble, indeed, but he would rather Glorfindel fade in grief than Elladan be bound to one he did not love. And what of this supposed, yet never proclaimed, love? Did Elladan truly esteem him above all others, or did he merely act, himself in keen distress, on his grief-stricken father’s preference of suitor? For his part, Glorfindel knew not if he truly loved Elladan as an elf loves another, or if his spiked blood ruled its house-heart. Perhaps this knowledge would ever remain elusive.

These bleak suspicions confounded him, as he swept into the small alcove that served as library. He knew of but one that could be resolved to his own satisfaction. With some brief research, he might beg an hour of sleep from his roughshod mind. There, tucked into both a cushion-less armchair and the very volume he sought, lurked Elladan; a carafe of the turgid, violet Mirkwood wine near-emptied on the way-table beside him. 

The book lay across his folded legs; his gray eyes stared out, into nothingness. His lips, thick and purple, were stained by the potent draught, whose effects Glorfindel had witnessed too often to himself dare sample: near-instantaneous intoxication, ungainliness, and, if consumed in sufficient quantities, hallucinations. The dwarven soothsayers used the violent liquor to provoke visions, though Glorfindel doubted Elladan had this intent. If ever his charge needed his protection, judging by the half-drunk goblet and near-drained carafe, it would be now. 

Suddenly, Elladan recoiled into his seat, as if taunted by some unseen specter. He winced, his senses assaulted by a braising, phantom cry, then struggled to quell the shivers quaking through him. 

“Not yet,” he screeched, with tremulous authority. “You will not have me yet!!” He leapt from his seat, book thrown into the invisible creature’s face, then stumbled into the way-table. He caught sight of the still night beyond and, like a trapped bird weighted by drink, he staggered to the window, bashing his forehead on the merciless glass. The impact seemed to break his treacherous imaginings, but did little to pillow the hard blow of the floor.

“Elladan!” Glorfindel shouted, despite himself. He flew to the prince’s side, unable to longer bear the piteous sight. 

At first, the elf-warrior seemed not to know him or other, his eyes rolling wild, unfocused. Glorfindel caught his clawing hands, stayed them, all the while cooing hushed reassurances. After some brief consolation, the guard-captain managed to hold his drooping head to examine him. To his relief, he found few traces of redness. He would not bruise, and thus be reminded of this indignity for weeks to come. Glorfindel knew how closely the brave elf-warrior held his reputation, how tenaciously his self-regard; neither would be served by the knowing of this incident. 

Satisfied, he aided his now drowsy charge to his wobbly feet and set about guiding him to his chambers. Elladan sank readily against him, his leaden head collapsed on his guardian’s shoulder and his loose body pressed tightly to him. Ruled by a near-manic consternation, Glorfindel needed not work hard to dismiss the faint yearning this contact stirred. The violet spirits forgotten, he lurched them cautiously down the corridor, not wanting to rouse the threadbare morality of Thranduil’s attention. As they made their way through the birchwood gables, however, Elladan’s sense began to fitfully rouse. 

“Did I best them?” he asked, unable to stifle the worry from his tone. “Have they gone?” 

“Who pursued you, pen-neth?” Glorfindel questioned softly. 

“Vengeance,” he mused, unable to follow. “They sought vengeance… but it will be mine, I have sworn it! Before they have me, before I’m done… but the temptation! I cannot see the line. The line dims, fades, between vengeance and corruption…”

“Who is corrupt, then?” the guard-captain inquired, his concern mounting. 

“I am!!” Elladan bleated, his voice laced with sorrow. “They know it, know my heart is hardened, brittle… they await its breaking. Await my fall… tempt me, always, draw me further down with their lies… but I know it, I know it well. They do not lie.” 

“But tell me, pen-neth,” Glorfindel urged anew. “Who are these tormentors?”

“They do not die, the black riders,” Elladan forewarned him. “Only flame may distract them, and this but for a time… only flame…” 

They had reached the guest quarters; Glorfindel swiftly shut the door behind them and cradled the lugubrious prince fully into his arms, hoping to fan his eternal flame with his warmth. In their beleaguered passage, the guardian had sensed – in his blood, in his very bones – a dimming of the young peredhel’s spirit. He knew not if the toxic drink or these black hauntings caused this, but he knew well enough to immediately proceed to treatment, regardless of the price he himself might have to pay. Thankfully, his enveloping presence seemed to calm Elladan, who gave in to his fatigue and allowed his eyes to droop shut. 

Thinking that sleep had overtaken him, Glorfindel gathered them both onto the bed, resting himself against the backboard and Elladan against him, so as not to become forgetful in his lassitude. Still, the baking heat of his charge’s weight did cause some of his baser instincts to stir, but so faint that the Noldor dared to indulge the wisps of longing teasing his languorous limbs. They lay, so joined, for some considerable time, before Elladan’s hot breath breezed across his collar. 

“Glorfindel,” he rasped in recognition. “How did we come to be…?”

“Hush, pen-neth,” his guardian soothed him. “Rest, now.” Nevertheless, Elladan attempted to stir, but his wrecked body had other plans. He groaned, a tone halfway between pain and deep pleasure, and sank further into their embrace. 

“The boarders are breeched,” he mused, straining for coherency. “We must call the guard… Elrohir and Legolas must fly, we must save them…” 

“You have drunk, Elladan,” Glorfindel chided, though amused by this misplaced display of valor. “There is no danger.” 

“No danger?!” he exclaimed, braising his parched throat in the process. “The Nazgul are upon us!” 

“Sleep now, meleth,” Glorfindel whispered. “All is well.” He bent, unthinking, to silence him with a gentle kiss. He would have told him of his ravings, would have comforted him further, but the flickers of his desire suddenly burned to an indauntable intensity and he could naught but deepen these sensuous caresses. 

Intoxicated still, by drink and now by luminous Glorfindel, Elladan opened willingly to him, drawing at the ardent, wanting tongue that met his own. He sank down onto the coarse Mirkwood beddings, pulling the besotted elf over him, the spread of his taut, muscled frame blanketing him with well-needed heat. He gave himself to this sweet consolation, his drunken mind offering not a hint of objection. 

Glorfindel, for his part, was consumed by the surge of his own eternal flame, as he eased over of the ripe young body beneath him. Too long had he denied himself this pleasure, too long had he locked his passion away. As he suckled the pale, loam-scented skin of Elladan’s neck, he felt the young elf’s potency swell and was nearly undone by its meeting his own, primed shaft. With cunning strokes through his leather breeches, he brought Elladan to fullness. Trembling, needful fingers soon yanked them down to his knees, as Glorfindel crawled down to claim him. Hungry, so blindingly hungry for another, more visceral taste of him, he lapped vigorously at the thick, scarlet length, then swallowed him whole. Still boneless, Elladan could only entwine soft, grateful fingers through the tousled blonde locks of his hair, as his husband’s fevered mouth made up the necessary friction. 

With a moan of sheer, wanton gratitude, Elladan found his rapturous release. Moments later, sleep struck. 

Glorfindel, mouth full of gorgeous, salty cream, savored the viscous texture awhile, then swallowed the tart essence down. He had not so drained a lover since before Elladan was born… and just such sharp reasoning instantly soured him. 

With eyes of blunt, startling clarity, he came back into himself, the shame of his near-abusive actions thoroughly sickening him. He shook, then, unable to restrain a disgusted sob, but, with the force of character that slew the fiery Balrog, the former Lord Glorfindel of Gondolin rallied. He lowered his eyes from Elladan’s flush radiance, withdrew from the bed. Mechanically, he stripped the sleep-heavy elf of his garments, tucked him in, careful to turn him on his side, as he preferred in his infancy. He stopped to recollect himself, a tall glass of water and a leftover cranapple ridding him of the luring taste of sweet Elladan. 

Only then did he allow his eyes to take him in, his tranquil, slumbering charge. His husband in name. He seared the memory of this horrific error, of this spit-worthy weakness into his perilously frail mind, then turned away. He removed himself from the room, left the talan, down the tree-wound stairs, to the stable-keep. 

He mounted his fair steed, rode as far and as fast as the horse would take him away.

To where he could do no further harm. 

* * * 

Gold Arien shone over the Mirkwood forest, fearless, glaring, crowned by the haloed tree-tops, her bold rays banishing the last of the goblin gloom. Refracted through the stained-glass skylight overhead, the peerless light colored the pale canvass of the sleeping elves’ skin. Rich amber, callow azure, soft sea green, and the dark jade of waybrush leaves played over their undulating chests, as they stole these last, precious moments of rest. 

Having moved too far from Elrohir in his sleep, Legolas shivered, awoke. Strained, unfamiliar muscles winged within him, his backside particularly ride-raw. Nestling back into his elf-knight’s listless arms, he relished this new, emblematic agony as small price for both the peredhel’s loving and his own much-wanted majority. The pain, at any rate, was far outweighed by the previous night’s abundant pleasures, the recent memory of which Legolas allowed to drift through his lazy mind. These half-remembered sensations coursed through him anew, rousing the young elf’s ever-ready desire. 

Here was Elrohir, laid out before him like a feast on midsummer night: lissome neck stretched elegant for his devouring; dark thatches of hair grown wild across the plane of his chest, mowed sparse over his strung abdomen; legs tossed carelessly open; sinuous arms plump with muscle; strange, bracken-guarded hollows of his underarms black, mysterious. Legolas hardly knew where to begin, so eager was he for exploration, for sensation. Wandering fingers searched across these fleshy clefts, sweeps, crevices, soon followed by grazing lips and a moist, nimble tongue. As deft as any true journeyman, Legolas left no patch of skin dry, no nipple unmolested, nor even the most densely packed nerve unprovoked. 

By the time Elrohir wafted into wakefulness, he found himself breathless with need. His body primed by Legolas’ keen ministrations, he hotly met the young prince’s ripe, waiting mouth. Merciful fingers coiled around his blunt erection, rough, knowing strokes wasted no time in bringing him, in a blind instant, to wrecked completion. The orgasm ripped across his still dormant body like a whip, braising his woozy frame with stripes of zealous pleasure. The charge was stealthy, sure, his utter undoing. As the torrents of feeling ebbed to a light, lingering thrall, Elrohir was unsure of how this unparalleled rousing had come to pass. 

Unable to suppress a heady giggle, Legolas traced the edge of his pointed ear with an able tongue. “Good morn, melethron. How was your rest?” 

“Uneventful,” Elrohir remarked, still wondering at the potency of the princeling’s skill. “And you, maltaren? Do your limbs ache some?” 

“Some,” Legolas admitted, moving to meet his tender gaze. “I proudly bear the pain of your passions, lirimaer.” A smirk twined his lips. “I hope one day, you may experience a similarly… delicious ache.” 

“One day,” Elrohir promised, attempting to mask his eagerness. “After our binding, when you are grown.” 

At this gentle reminder, Legolas scowled. The truth of the day’s reckoning, the sounds of preparation beyond the talan, the scorch of sunlight across his back, all these at once encroached upon him, sundering his mirth. He swallowed back his curses, laid his head on Elrohir’s broad chest, over his heart. 

“Will you not linger here awhile?” he queried, his playfulness forced. “Another month, perhaps, or two? You might teach me to string a longbow with horsehair, improve my broadsword skills. We could soon hunt quintail, the season’s upon us…”

“I must go, melethron,” Elrohir laid bare, hoping to soften the blow with a kiss to his fair crown. “I am sworn to Elladan, to my kin.”

“Elladan might stay, too,” he dismissed these objections with mounting desperation. “Glorfindel will remain another sixmonth, perhaps they can resolve…?”

“Lord Celeborn awaits our return,” the elf-knight argued, without the benefit of his own conviction. He had grown to esteem Legolas such as never before; no other elf had claimed his heart with such ardor, such impenetrable hold. He knew, without promises exchanged or burdensome politicks, that he loved him. That they would come to love each other, he and the elf his mercurial princeling would become. 

In time. The only lesson that remained him. 

Legolas had fallen silent, as sorrow’s daggers struck, as if he could sense the peredhel’s arguments before they were bespoke. Elrohir gathered him tightly close, cocooning them in the coarse sheets, but the proud elf would not give in to sadness. He met his fate with the newborn strength of his majority. 

“I would be bound to you, Elrohir,” he declared. “This very day, if you would. My father would consent. He himself suggested it to me, last evening.” 

Elrohir sighed longly, collecting his thoughts. “I wish for nothing more, truly, meleth. You are indeed… a rare pearl. Adventurous. Skilled. Joyful. You will come to wisdom, I have no doubt. And I confess… I confess I have never felt such a love, never before. It strikes… to the core. The heart of my oneness. You are, some say and I dearly concur, an archer of unparalleled skill.” Legolas laughed, once, at this, but returned to solemnity. “Wisdom will indeed come, maltaren-nin, but you alone must undertake this journey. I cannot help it, cannot guide you along, else our bonding might prove too frail to last out eternity. You must be first, and always, for yourself. When you come to this knowledge, when you know I speak true, then you may come to me, join me, and we will be joined. Bound. Forever.” 

For endless moments, Legolas lay silent, neither harkening to, nor withdrawing from, Elrohir’s steady arms around him. 

“Do you mark me, Legolas?” Elrohir questioned at last, no longer able to bear the stillness. 

“Aye, meleth,” he whispered, then shut his parched eyes. “May we linger here, awhile?”

“We need not rise until noon,” Elrohir replied, himself grateful for the request. “I had foreseen it.” 

“Hannon le, meleth,” Legolas answered softly, as he sank further in to his dearest one.

* * * 

Elladan woke with a jolt. 

He discovered himself in his bed and quite naked; he knew not how, nor what complicit events had transpired since he quit the begetting-day meal the previous evening. He scoured his dull memory: blank. The bed itself was empty, save for him, save for the slight, intangible odor of yasbrinth flower. No doubt his own store of salve, as his groin displayed unmistakable signs of vigorous self-abuse. Not a trace in the surrounding chambers seemed worth noting, only there, across the floor, not a shadow but… a black cloak. 

Elladan recoiled into the headboard, his stomach swooning like a trireme amidst the rapids. He’d drunk that ghastly dwarf-wine – this he *knew* - curse their wretched, beard-clad maids, curse their corned toes. As fair Arien glared through the skylight – for certes no friend of Shadowspawn – Elladan crawled off the coverlet, over to the wash-basin, then voided the entirety of his insides in a gush of bile-laced, violet gunk. He shrunk back onto the floor, laying his burning cheek on the cool, coral-hued tile. He unconsciously tugged over the nearby cloak and wrapped himself in its rich, velvet folds. Velvet. A formal cloak, not the crude, bristled fabric the black riders wore, and certainly not smelling so of yasbrinth… Though his skull pulsed like hearth-roasting quintail meat, Elladan could not mistake this confounding sign. /Glorfindel./

Chastely tucked-in by his ever-watcher; scolded as an overly-precocious elfling, he’d no doubt. /Not as a husband, no. Never such respect, not for he./ 

Elladan curled further into the cloak, waiting out his nausea. His thoughts ignored this foul reminder, instead turning to Elrohir. Cautiously, he released hold of present qualms, descended into himself, into the otherworld only they shared. He sensed the peace Elrohir had found in the princeling’s arms, the rush of their recent coupling and the well of violent feeling gathered at his core. His kindly twin had at last tapped the love within him; this consoled him greatly. His dear brother had steadied him in his time of need; this day, he would do so for Elrohir. 

For the meantime, Elladan took shelter in the womb of their contentment, hoping to shut out the culling, lucid darkness, which ever-threatened to breech the perimeter of his own tenuously held heart.

* 

Later, he stood calmly at his somber twin’s side, before Thranduil King, his court, and this pale cast of Legolas. Both lovers had retreated into staid formality, but their brimming eyes told the lonely tale. 

The Mirkwood court bowed with resolution, few other than the princeling dissatisfied at their leave-taking. Sindarin pride reigned with Thranduil, their fractious relations with Mirthbrethil and Luinaelin ample sign of his influence, though might was in rare evidence in the King himself. Throughout the fortnight sojourn as negotiations had continued to flounder, only a visit from Celeborn himself might prevent the dissolution of their alliance. This seemed to little mark Elrohir and Legolas, though they would pay the highest price, if the Lorien Lord failed in his dealings. Glorfindel himself had taken his leave that very night for Imladris, no doubt to persuade their Lord father of a visit north. 

Elladan dared not wonder what other cause precipitated his hurried flight. 

With an imperious snort, Thranduil turned on his heel, left, his elder sons and bevy of advisors following suit behind. Legolas’ incandescent eyes stayed locked on Elrohir, impervious to his father’s rude retreat. Elladan cleared his throat, stepped forward.

“I would be honored, Legolas of Mirkwood,” he proclaimed. “If you would accept a… a small gift.” The princeling’s ever-live curiosity was piqued. He wrenched his eyes away from the disbelieving elf-knight, who himself raised a questing brow at his twin’s strangeness.

“A gift?!” Legolas exclaimed. His now-sparkling eyes flicked over Elrohir, as if requesting permission. Elrohir shrugged, himself confused. “I welcome any treasure you might bestow upon me, Prince Elladan, but… what have I done to warrant such…?”

“A most accomplished task, to be sure, meldir,” Elladan explained. “You have captured the heart of the fairest son of Elrond.” Elrohir himself chuckled fondly at his brother’s mischievous ways. Legolas, for his part, blushed a ferocious scarlet. “You guard its gentle keeping, and so, having been its protector for many years, I pass on to you the…necessary weaponry, to properly defend an organ of such delicate nature.” 

He fetched a fine leather scabbard from his riding pack, unlaced its bindings, and withdrew two long, trenchant war-knives, their smooth ivory hilts engraved in the manner of the seafarers of Sirion. Legolas was entranced by these sharp twin orc-slayers, but Elrohir long knew of their stealth. Still, he wondered at Elladan’s intent. 

“These belonged to virtuous Earendil,” Elladan told. “Passed to him on his majority by his Ada. He passed them on to our own dear Lord Elrond, who gave them to me on the occasion of my binding. But I have not the need, as I prefer the broadsword of men and the bow of our people. But you, fair archer, might find use of them, to protect that tender heart in your keeping. To protect your own, for later use.” 

“Elladan,” the princeling swiftly objected. “They are for those of your kin, I cannot-“

“You will soon be of my kin, pen-gwanur,” he insisted. “And certainly neither I nor Elrohir will bear an heir.” The twins indulged their mirthfulness, but Legolas remained decidedly sober. He stared at the argent, glinting knives, an echo of their quicksilver flint in his eyes. 

“I am… most honored, Son of Elrond,” he finally accepted, as Elladan sheathed the slit-knives and gifted him their full scabbard. Legolas tucked them to his chest, then bowed in deference. “I swear to keep both treasures entrusted to my care with… unwavering vigilance.” 

“I’ve no doubt of this,” Elladan beamed at the bashful elf. “Pen-gwanur.” He left to mount his steed, as the lovers bid their farewells. 

End of Part Five


	6. Wound

Part Six

Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 2,718

At the thunder clap, he veered westward. 

Elrohir charged his weary steed into the stark, stone labyrinth of toothsome crags and of sooted trails amidst the Hithaeglir foothills. The blunt rock floor of the passage sheared at the edges of Virgor’s hooves, but not a moment’s respite could be spared. Above, the ashen mist pooled into thick swaths of gray cloud, as the wind blew fitfully against them. The elf-knight kicked hard at the horse’s flanks, though he need not remind the spooked stallion of the gaining threat. Daring to glance behind them, he found the black riders mere inches from Virgor’s tail, an arm’s length from Elladan’s flailing cloak. 

How his failing brother clung to him still, he did not know.

As if in response, Elladan gripped his iron hold deeper into his twin’s rigid abdomen, his sweat-mired brow pummeling the back of his shoulder-blades. Elrohir feared their breakneck pace might knock him unconscious, but there was no alternative. Elladan’s constant, heaving rasps were the only sign that his brother yet lived, even as the dampness of his blood-soaked wound spread across his back. 

As they sped into higher ground, Elrohir again heeled the over-strained horse. They galloped wildly through a tight crevice, hoping to gain some distance, when Elrohir was inspired. He screamed at his near-listless brother, who coughed a heave of blood and bile onto his already streaming neck. This time, Elrohir kicked at Elladan’s limp boots, which sufficiently roused the groggy elf enough for him to release his cloak. The dark, billowing blanket had the twin advantages of momentarily blinding their pursuers and saving Elladan from choking. 

The Nazgul shrieked, a spine-splinting, primal cry. Lightening blast around them, singed a raw, cindered scar into the ground ahead. Virgor, pushed beyond his limits, reared hysterically, his hooves mere steps from plunging into a sheer-faced gorge. The sky erupted, then, dousing them with icy spews of rain and bruising pellets of hail. Elrohir held tight to the reins, doubly tight to Elladan behind, then spun the horse around to meet the preying Shadowspawn head on. He had no other choice. 

The elf-knight, muttering a hasty prayer for leniency in Mandos, drew his sword. The faceless Nazgul loomed beyond, unhurried, relishing the capture of such hallowed prey. He felt Elladan’s blood-smeared lips against his ear, his parched throat gathering his last farewell. 

“Forgive me,” he bleated, collapsing his weight against him.

“I am here, gwanur-nin,” Elrohir swore to him, gripping desperately into the hand that now sagged in his lap. “I am with you to the last.” 

Before he could raise the final charge, a swarm of flaming arrows buzzed by, blindsiding the Nazgul. Four instantly flared up, their steeds fleeing into the night. Three others were unhorsed, a second wave conflagrating them into a communal pyre. Before the last two could ride through, Elrohir smacked Vigor’s quavering flank and the horse leapt over the blazing pile, racing, as if the animal himself was aflame, back through the crevice, down to the main road. Elrohir had not caught sight of their saviors; he nevertheless lifted his eyes to the heavens. 

When they came to the bridge at Corseth, the elf-knight slowed them to a light canter. Once crossed, he dared pause to look back. Further lightning strikes reflected on the elf-guard’s silver armor, as three distinct parties descended behind them. Elladan’s lax body slumped to one side; Elrohir knew he should halt, wait, if only to thank them. He guided Virgor over to a sheltering ledge, then dismounted, easing Elladan down after him. The valiant elf-warrior was merely sleeping, not as he had feared, his orc-cut wound clotted nicely. Elladan had managed to suck the last of a healing drought early in their flight, its effects already potently felt. 

The elf army had crossed, collapsed the bridge behind them. They were safe. 

The captain - by his colors, though strange to Elrohir - and two lieutenants trotted over, their faces obscured, cloaked in similar fashion to the Nazgul. Elrohir’s gut knotted tight; he kept Elladan closely held. The lieutenants set down around them, revealing themselves at last. 

“Feolath! Orandthil!” Elrohir exhaled, relief claiming him at the sight of the rogue Galadhrim. “Mae govannen, mellomanim. What brings you so far north? Not that I have cause to object...” 

These two valiant Lorien elves, and no doubt their party, formed a secret band of well-placed spies. Formed and ultimately commanded by Lord Celeborn, the rogue elves held allegiance to him, but wore no known colors and kept no code; indeed, only those of highest authority even knew of their existence. It was said in their ranks were pairs of bound lovers, though Elrohir had never known for certain, once forced out of Lorien by the stingy guard-captain that fathered Haldir. Now, their missions were so protected, even Galadriel herself knew nothing. With relations so fraught between Mirkwood and the other tribes, Elrohir had little trouble guessing of their provenance. 

“You know well enough, we wander far, Son of Elrond,” Feolath replied, concern overshadowing formality. “How does he fair?”

“On the mend, until we reach Imladris,” Elrohir assured them. “I gave him a healing drought, athelas and flaxweed.”

“Which is he?” Orandthil asked bashfully. “Which are you?” 

“He is Elrohir, the elder,” the captain announced coldly. “He will ride with me. The wounded is Elladan, Feolath will take him on. Orandthil, lead the horse.” 

“And *his* name?” Elrohir hissed, angered at the unknown captain’s imperious tone and heedless commands. 

“Virgor,” the captain snapped, but also seemed somehow amused by the gambit. 

Elrohir, searching for his no doubt familiar identity, spied a white-gold lock caught in his collar-clasp. “Glorfindel?” The captain snorted loudly in disdain, also somehow familiar to him. “Name yourself, stranger, or else be revealed by my broadsword.” 

Nerves frayed bare by the harrowing chase, Elrohir, exhausted and overburdened, held no temper for games. Handing Elladan over to Feolath, he unsheathed his waiting sword and marched over to the dismounting captain, teeth grit. 

“Is this the favor a rescuer claims?” the hidden captain chided. “What would your Lord father say of such bleak gratitude?”

“He would say,” Elrohir seethed. “That those that cower behind cloakhoods deserve their rash judgment.” 

“To which corner of Arda fled your renown diplomacy, Prince of Imladris?” the rich voice laughed outright. 

Behind them, Elladan coughed, once, roughly, then replied: “Into the sea, in hand with your virginity, Prince of Mirkwood.” Elrohir’s astonished face, first glaring at Elladan, now spun to meet that of the captain revealed. “Really, Elrohir, it was plain from the start.” 

At this, Legolas snickered, then moved to welcome his slack-jawed betrothed. 

“Mae govannen, melethron,” he whispered, now but seconds from the first embrace of their reunion. “I have come to claim you.” 

* 

The air was cool, calm beneath ghostly Ithil above. Elrohir, wrapped tight in the captain’s cloak, was crouched by the hearth-fire, as Legolas tended Elladan’s wound. With sure, clean strokes, he washed away the purpled gore, pushed athelas gum into the seam, then dressed a measure of wheycloth around his swollen abdomen. Elladan, though long asleep, still managed to move when gently pressed to do so. Yet a half-day’s journey from Imladris but far from the treacherous foothills, Legolas had judged a brief rest necessary, if only for Virgor’s sake. 

Elrohir, having slept through most of their easy road, now scarfed down a veritable banquet of lembas, oarberry cakes, dried quintail, and Shirefield mushrooms, more food than he’d seen in a month. Careful not to fill himself too quickly, he instead indulged another gnawing appetite, his keen silver eyes rarely losing sight of Legolas. The flaxen-haired elf was easily half a foot taller than before, though still not quite Elrohir’s height, the raw beauty of his features more distinguished, more sage. His frame had developed most, where once there hung the lank gameness of elflinghood, now reigned a feral, sinuous grace. His smile was still such that misers might weep at its sheer radiance, yet, at times, a look of such dastardly delight came over him that one knew some rare mischief was imminent. 

Those rabid eyes turned on him, now, as the archer concluded his ministrations and took a place by the fire. 

“Has my cloak warmed you?” he teased fondly, seeming to rejoice in the mere sight of Elrohir before him. “Or would you prefer a more… intimate touch?” 

“If you wish to embrace me,” Elrohir acknowledged. “You are welcome.” Pleased, Legolas came over to him, entwining their tired limbs and resting his head on the slope of the elf-knight’s shoulder. He sighed mightily, then, with pure contentment. 

“I have longed for this,” he told him. “The memories of our time together are strongly held with me. But, at times, I feel I cannot trust in them, trust that I saw what was before me, and not what an elfling’s mind would see there.” 

“I have felt the same, of our time in Mirkwood,” Elrohir admitted. “You ensorcelled me… for months, afterwards, I thought of nothing else.”

“And now?” Legolas queried, far more lightly than he felt it. 

“Now…” Elrohir considered this, but had not yet truly formed an impression. The day had been so trying… 

“You are weary,” Legolas concluded, seeing his mind struggle to right itself. “I should not press you so.” 

“Tell me of yourself,” Elrohir changed tact, though out of genuine interest. “Why do you ride with this strange band?”

“I was recruited to them, on a visit to Lorien, though we presently come from Mirkwood,” Legolas began. “My Ada… He often sends me off on tactical errands, as a result of my rampant taste for journeying. Once charged, I send word to Celeborn… and receive my orders. Other times, I simply ride with the band. I am not oft in Mirkwood, these last years.”

“You deceive your father? Report on his commands?” Elrohir asked, astounded, but attempting to understand this peculiar choice. “Are you no longer loyal to Mirkwood, then?” 

“It is because I love the Mirkwood that I… I chose this path,” Legolas explained, concerned by the undercurrent of disapproval in Elrohir’s tone. “My Ada is gentle as he ever was, in moments when I am simply his son, but my King has gone mad. Breaking promises to Imladris and Lorien, endangering our people with his wilding schemes… I am an elf, first, and then one of Mirkwood. I cannot allow the Sindarin race to be killed off out of ignorance, or our Noldor kin endangered in these fell times.”

“Do your brothers know of this deception?” Elrohir questioned further, thought calmed by this reasoning. 

“They introduced me to it!” Legolas exclaimed, his blood up. He had not thought Elrohir, of all, would press him so. 

“But how are these elves in your care, if you report alone?” he continued on. “They are ten times your senior.”

“I outrank them,” Legolas replied.

“Outrank them?”

“Aye, Elrohir, mine is the greater skill,” he elaborated, not without some pride. “They know it well. When I ride with them, I am captain. I was twenty year guard-captain of Mirkwood, until I withdrew to wander.”

“Thranduil must have esteemed you then, resigning from his guard,” the elf-knight commented wryly, which tempered his betrothed. 

“It was a matter of honor,” Legolas informed him, grown quiet. “Your very own, if I’m not mistaken.”

“My honor?” Elrohir mused, overwhelmed, now, by ever-constant revelation. 

“Indeed,” Legolas sped on. “He refused to honor our betrothal, wished me wed to some long-lost cousin. A maid, at that. I resigned my commission, and the next week departed for places unknown. Lorien first, naturally, then ten years with the band. Only recently have I returned to Mirkwood, and then at Celeborn’s behest.”

“By Elbereth,” Elrohir reeled at the telling of it. “If I’d known you’d have such troubles, I’d have never left your side.”

“I am glad of your wisdom, in this,” Legolas insisted. “Though I will never be glad of parting from you.” He rose to meet those placid mithril eyes, cupping the darkling elf’s cheek in his steady palm. “I am grown now, my brave one. An elf of my own, as you once wished me, and come to join with you, as promised. As sworn.” He brushed sweet, ready lips over Elrohir’s own, the kiss patient, searching. The elf-knight’s eternal flame surged at the unexpected reunion, both his hungers now blissfully sated. “Will you have me, melethron-nin, upon our return to you father’s house? Be bound to me?”

“Aye, I will have you most thoroughly, meleth,” Elrohir promised, a hint of mischief bedeviling his own brimming eyes. “But only after our binding.” 

“And I will take the whole of you for my own, lovely one,” Legolas smirked, unable to mask his arousal. “As, I believe, was also promised. In our bed.”

“As you wish,” Elrohir glinted archly, then indulged in another long-denied kiss. 

* * * 

As Erestor’s carving knife slit through the translucent skin of his wrist, Glorfindel appeared more resigned than bothered. 

The Loremaster gripped tight to the bone from behind the arm, placed the clean wound over a ready vial, then squeezed out a vital stream of blood. With the swift, sure fingers of a longtime healer, he dropped in a pinch of wolfsbane for freshness, corked the chilled vial, and, after anointing the severed skin with athelas cream, covered the wrist in a mistweed compress. Dismissing Glorfindel’s wry smirk (he’d survived far graver injuries), Erestor’s sharp eyes instead moved beyond the restless guard-captain to his fitful patient’s bed beyond. Limbs splayed wild, Elladan had finally lost the battle against sleep, his exhausted body weighted down to the mattress by sheer overexertion, his eyelids leaden, still purpled by fatigue. Never had the Loremaster had a more reluctant patient, his determination to rise during wakefulness only outlasted by the raging nightmares that plagued his dormant hours. True rest remained elusive, as did the restoration of his health, thus this brief respite from torment, self or otherwise, was much valued by his vigilant physician. 

His sallow face betraying a keen sadness, Glorfindel also turned to face the elf-warrior’s sickbed. 

Though Erestor was hardly shocked by the guard-captain’s willing compliance in this healing-technique, he wondered if the sight of Elladan so helpless might not aid in softening his hard stance on other, more worrisome facts of their binding. Erestor knew well what caused Elladan’s weakened state, what kept his body leagues from recovery when his wound had been mainly superficial; knew also his friend’s blunt stance on the subject of his devotion. Ever since Erestor’s own binding, they had often quarreled over the contentious issue: Glorfindel holding stubbornly to his path of argument-erosion – while offering none of his own, Erestor desperately rallying for emotion over reason. Relations between the elders of Imladris had also suffered in the twins prolonged absence, Elrond’s trust in his guard-captain’s judgment as diffused as Elladan’s waning flame. Still, Glorfindel clung to his beliefs, though his current haggard appearance gave the Loremaster some little hope. 

It was Glorfindel’s arms who’d met Faolath as he’d dismounted, weeks ago; Glorfindel who’d cradled Elladan’s gaunt head to his steady shoulder and carried him straight to the Healing Halls, shouting down the sick ward as if Imladris was under orc attack. For the next week he’d nightly haunted the ward, stealing down from the stable-dorm under cover of darkness to loom at the sickly elf’s side, dabbing his fevered brow, settling him after his harrowing dreams, every-ready with a water-cup, extra blanket, or comforting hand. The sole reason Erestor knew of these secret ministrations was an undercooked oxted shank, which had caused him to seek out a midnight remedy for Haldir’s lurching stomach. He greatly doubted, however, that Elladan himself was aware of his husband’s tireless nocturnal presence, as the young prince rarely evidenced coherence before noon, or after sunset. 

As he replaced the mistweed with a firmer bandage, the Loremaster wondered at the condition of Glorfindel’s apparent change of heart. 

“I dissolved loaksbloom into his supper broth,” Erestor commented to the preoccupied guard-captain. “Enough to sunder a horse.”

“Was that wise?” Glorfindel asked, fear underlying his studied patience. After weeks of gripping anxiety, his usual balance of pointed humor and of steel-strong reserve had given way to rawness Erestor had rarely witnessed in him. 

“Hardly,” the Loremaster admitted. “But necessary. He must rest! His nights are plagued by-“

“Dreams,” Glorfindel finished for him, yet turned inward. “Terrible, soul-scraping dreams.” He halted, then, and sighed as if with his last breath. He stood, ignoring the fall of the unfastened bandage at his wrist, and strode over to the prince’s bedside. “Can you do nothing for him?” 

Erestor formed his answer with care. “I have employed all the remedies I know. The trouble is, as you say, in his soul. Perhaps… perhaps if you visited him in the afternoon, showed him some affection… It is thus, among the Eldar. One caress from your lips, one mere embrace would be a more potent curative than a thousand doses of pure athelas root.” 

“My blood will not cure him?” Glorfindel expertly deflected. 

“Aye,” Erestor confessed, chafing. “It may. For a time.” 

At this, Glorfindel’s head whipped around. “A time? Is it so weak?” 

“His wound is long healed,” Erestor explained. “The scar fades daily. He is not kept bedridden by the accidental swing of a orc’s feeble hand, but by the dimming of his fea. His soul-flame. For some long time, it has bourn an immeasurable burden; light, at first, but grown heavy with the passing years, until now the weight near-crushes him. The gift of your life’s blood will chip away at it, but, without a constant renewal, it will grow to again overtake him.”

“Does he fade?” Glorfindel questioned in a dull hush, his face ashen. 

“It bears certain similarities,” Erestor conjectured. “But he does not grieve. He cannot. You are bound together, both alive, both…relatively unharmed.”

The guard-captain took a moment to digest this, his mind working hard to form the necessary links to other, pressing inquiries. “Will he die?” 

“I am unsure,” the Loremasted exhaled irritably, as much at his own incapacity as at Glorfindel’s attitude. “There is no precedent for such a malady, among our kind or other. Though I have little doubt as to the necessary course for remedy...” 

“Curse you,” Glorfindel lashed out at him; Erestor only now seeing sign of the titanic anger held tenuously at bay. 

“I merely relate what I have observed, mellon-nin,” Erestor stated calmly, long able to stay the course of the guard-captain’s renown, yet rarely seen, temper. 

“Such convenience,” he snarled back.

“It is my duty, like your own, to seek out the invisible enemy and snuff him from existence,” Erestor coldly reminded him. “The foes I face down cannot be seen, but they are equally quick, merciless. Perhaps more so.” 

“And it is my sworn duty to protect he to whom I am bound!” Glorfindel bellowed, thrusting the full velocity of his fury at him. This instantly spent, he swallowed dryly. “Even from myself…” Glorfindel looked down at the tousled, troubled prince, then sank to his knees as an anchor into the sea. He entwined Elladan’s lissome, calloused fingers with his own, his penitent gaze locked on the young elf’s face. 

“How may such caring harm him?” Erestor inquired with extreme delicacy. “If you would only show sign of the love I know you bear him…” 

Glorfindel grunted in response, shut his eyes. He fell dangerously silent. With cautious, yet convinced steps, Erestor approached his old friend, then lay warm, steady hands on his shoulders. 

“I will confess it now,” Glorfindel suddenly remarked. “And we must never again speak of it.” He waited for Erestor to swear to this, but, when none came, he nevertheless pushed on. “I… I know not if I would love him, Erestor, had Elrond not… if he had not so unthinkingly erred, being so joyously distracted. I have come to believe that Elladan… may have evidenced love for me, either way. He loves with such ferocity, such unbending will… and when Legolas’ clear, unblinking adoration for Elrohir came into evidence, at Mirkwood… a drop, a mere drop of blood was shared between Elrohir and he, and they love with such blithe, unreasonable skill… it must be destined. It cannot be the work of blood alone, which has little sway in the afterlife of those that are slain.” 

He paused, collected himself, then elaborated on this last point. “I have been dead, meldir, waiting for a near-century in Mandos, but not as others. Those contented souls did not even note the passing of time, so reconciled were they with those they once cherished. But the love I held for Tuor, for the people of his rule and of his kin so haunted me, tormented me without end or reason, until the Valar took on my piteous cause and sent me back as protector of Elrond’s house. I had known some love before my death, but none so ripe, so urgent as that I felt for Tuor in Mandos. At Gondolin, we had bound our souls together, not with blood, but in a haze-mist ritual. Our fea, as one. If I so bind myself to Elladan, in the consummation of our marriage, and he is slain…” 

This last admission struck Erestor as a blow to the skull: “Glorfindel!! You have kept from Elladan’s bed… to reduce the pain of his possible death?!”

“He must have his freedom, in all things, Erestor!” Glorfindel cried, his warped reasoning and its underlying agony laid frighteningly bare. “I know not if my love is… is uncompromised. I know only that in Mandos, these blood rituals do not hold. It is the binding of soul to soul in the love act that holds true beyond this life, and… if I do not truly love Elladan… don’t you see, he must be free to quest, to avenge Celebrian… in all things!! But this freedom comes at a grave risk… if he should be slain, and awaiting my return to Valinor, or Mandos, but then I come and my love does not hold… if I have but lusted in our bed, and loved him as a guardian should… an eternity of the most corrosive torment I have ever known awaits him… I cannot, Erestor, I cannot be so cruel…” 

“Glorfindel, this is madness,” Erestor chided him, yanking him up to his feet and spinning him around. He shook him roughly, incensed by this fell, self-protective reasoning. “Never have I known you so unreasonable, so fretful, so… cowardly!!” 

The guard-captain’s face hardened, his blood up: “I confess myself to you, *meldir*, and you do nothing but taunt me?!” 

At this, Erestor almost laughed: “How can I act otherwise, when you have abandoned all sense of reason? What if Elladan survives, passes on to Valinor without incident? What if he remains in Arda, choosing the mortal life of his uncle? What if you are slain, and he fades? For his soul-flame dims now, as if you’d passed over again to Mandos. He is loveless, and alone, only Elrohir keeps his weak strength, and when he himself is bound… How can you persist with this insolence, when the elf who once begged for your hand is now cindering like a smote hearthfire. Is this how such a brave warrior should fail? Where is your boldness now, Balrog-slayer?!” 

“If you had known Gondolin’s fall, Loremaster,” Glorfindel seethed, ever defiant. “You would not be so brash, so… misguided, in your conclusions.” 

“He needs your strength,” Erestor spat, disgusted. “Your absconded heart. Perhaps you should return to Mandos, and search for it.” 

At this cunning quip, Glorfindel snorted with pure menace, fisted his fight-clenched hands over the seams of his cloak, and fled into the night, rage quaking through him as never before. 

Deflated, Erestor watched him go. 

His movements incorrigibly pensive, he retrieved the knife, bandages, athelas cream, and necessary vial from the worktable, then positioned his seat at Elladan’s bedside. Only when he lifted a hand to check his temperature, did his stunned eyes lock with the darkling elf’s weary glare. 

“I have not slept,” Elladan rasped, by way of explanation. “I am heavy with it, so that I cannot long keep focus, but it has not come.” Erestor sighed mightily; shelving his healer’s tools by the bedside and taking the groggy elf’s arm between his own. 

“He is… confused, Elladan,” Erestor attempted to justify. 

“I marked little confusion,” the prince replied softly. “Yet much conviction. As I am now similarly convinced. I will not have the remedy.” 

“You must, my brave one,” Erestor insisted. “Else…”

“Else I will pass to Mandos,” Elladan acknowledged, without sign of fear or of shame. “So you have declared. At considerable volume, if I recall.” A faint smile emerged on his lips, shocking Erestor all the more. “I do not fear the waiting. I long for peace… I welcome such blissful oblivion, meldir. There is little here that tempts the continuation of my presence. I knew this before Glorfindel spoke so… forlornly, of his own torments there.”

“Glorfindel spoke poorly…”

“I knew, also, of Ada’s mistake,” he admitted. “I have known it since before my majority.” 

Erestor, now leagues beyond mere astonishment, could only bleat: “But how…?”

“It is unimportant,” Elladan dismissed sluggishly, his attention waning. He corralled his roaming focus, this discussion, unlike his longtime understanding of Glorfindel’s plight, of considerable import to him. “If I am healed, Erestor, even for a time… I will fall to Shadow. The ominous dreams… which grip me so ardently… are the Nazgul’s call. They have plagued me since the first month of my binding. They summon me into their ranks, knowing of my soul’s weakness. When I was injured, in the orc battle, they knew. They came at once, preying on my vulnerability, my lack of strength. It was not for vengeance they pursued us. It was for my… my…. If it were not for Legolas… I would be with them, now.” He let this black revelation hang between them, struggling for control. “So, you see, I must be allowed to fade. My dear Ada, loyal Elrohir, will suffer through my loss… but they would not survive my fall.” He rallied his own waning spirit. “I am a warrior, first. I *will not* fall.” 

Overcome, suddenly, by a healer’s sheer frustration, by a wrought, blazing rage at the guard-captain’s blind insolence and Elladan’s shattering valor, Erestor snatched the blood vial from the waytable and whipped it across the hall. As the fat glass smashed and the glutinous crimson smeared down the far wall, he sunk back into the stiff oak chair, defeated. /All the resources in Arda at my disposal, all the lore, potions, enchantments of this world… and not a thing to be done for him./ 

His dark, hollow stare bit deep into the prince’s placid gaze, who welcomed a near-crushing clasp to his frail arms. 

“You’ll be spared the Shadow’s claw,” Erestor vowed, in a coarse whisper. “And, when the time comes, I will mourn you the rest of my days.” Elladan exhaled haltingly, the truth of his decision almost choking his resolve. “I promise to see through this sorrow with your dearest kin, and… and to see your foul husband banished from their too-giving company.” 

“No, Erestor,” Elladan compelled him. “Your love alone will he take. Yours alone, in this. You must… you must give him the greatest share of it. You must… Ada will scorn him. You must be his comfort. He will need such comforting, when he sees… when he knows… you must swear to me, Erestor!!” 

Erestor regarded him, then, with nothing short of awe. He had never in all the millennia of his existence known such a heart, so bereft, yet so forgiving. The very definition of warrior’s honor. 

“I swear it, my brave one,” Erestor murmured to him. “I swear it, though it eats me through.” 

“Then I will see my brother bound and blissful,” Elladan added, almost serene. “Bid my father farewell, and climb to the highest peak of the blue-ridged hills. There, observing my happy twin safe in his binding-honeyed cabin, watching over the sweet season of my Rivendell valley, beneath the light of Earendil’s star, I will pass on…” 

Thusly satisfied, Elladan gave in, at last, to sleep’s brief consolation. 

* * * 

His exhalations stuttered in sharp, jagged pants, Legolas eased himself, salve-readied, swollen, in to the hilt. Elrohir, vise-legs around his rigid waist, cried gutturally out, then lingered on a sigh. 

Beneath the breeze-shivered, concealing bows of the willow, they lay entwined; the elf-knight’s eloquent, limber frame spread decadently over the verdant leaf bed, the archer’s formidable body above, caught in the thrall of this first, sensuous penetration. Agile, singing tongues of heat snaked around Legolas’ taut thighs, his abdominal skin braised tight as rawhide. He fought to still his quivering hips, which longed to abandon themselves to his basest desires, to plow into his beloved’s bountiful flesh like a shovel into fallow ground. With tenuous control, he momentarily withdrew only to sink himself further in, quicker, harder, the resulting jolt of addicting pleasure blasting away at his resolve. The hot, purpled bud of Elrohir’s arousal jabbed into his strung navel. His blunt heels butt the back of his pillar-thighs; his keening legs writhing, slapping against the sides of his waist, desperate for friction. The argent pools of his warm mithril eyes drew him in, wordlessly pleading to be taken, to be undone. Their tender sheen consoled Legolas; no matter how ardent their coupling, there was no question of the act being born of their love. 

With eroding restraint, he set a languorous rhythm, savoring every stroke, every slow-burn thrust that further joined them in rapture. 

For the Mirkwood prince, this sudden, instinctive coupling saw the completion of two centuries of careful self-preparation to become Elrohir’s equal in skill, in character, in wisdom, and, especially, in loving. That the elf-knight regarded him so entirely to give himself to him - in body, in soul – caused tears to wet the edges of his vision, though he struggled to keep sight of his beauteous mate in his throes. As he twined their fervent fingers together, their feas flowed free, merging in a heady gush through their flushed palms and flooding down into the wellsprings of flame at their core. Thusly united, Legolas allowed his thoughts to run wild through potent memory, staving off bittersweet release for a short while.

The sobering aftermath of Elrohir’s departure from Mirkwood, endless nights spent resurrecting his touch, his caresses, only to remain dissatisfied at the dull stirrings his hands wrought. Heedless, tiresome experimentations in his homeland led to more fruitful ones abroad, at first among the soldier’s ranks, then some few nobles, many with his sacred-band comrades, never with man or maid. He found he preferred elfkind; oftentimes Elrohir’s own former lovers, a trait so unwittingly common in his selections he came to seek it out, as if his bed-teacher had chosen these skilled companions for his apprenticeship. His liaisons, however useful, were fewer than most, until one restless night he found he had not bedded another in seventeen year, so ever-present was Elrohir’s sweet memory, and knew the time had come to find him. 

After their return to Imladris, they had been startlingly controlled in their chastity, both learned enough to desire knowledge of the other’s kind spirit, before hungry body. As Elladan’s sickness remained elusive to the Loremaster’s ministrations and the days became weeks, their ever-constant company could not help but include some brief but heartfelt kisses, a random hour of embracing, an afternoon lost in contemplation of the other’s radiance. They soon wrangled to keep themselves in check in more isolated moments, in the library or strolling through the forest, both committed to saving their most rigorous passions for their binding night. When a few weeks added into a month of delay, their frustration caused a comedy of midnight stealings: Elrohir to Legolas’ chambers, only to manage some sober reasoning midway, Legolas following in pursuit of Elrohir, only to happen upon a smirking Elrond, to whom they had vowed abstinence. This continued, to Erestor’s delight, for a tumultuous fortnight, until that very morning. 

After a cooling swim in the Bruinen, they had found shade and shelter beneath the lilting willow bows, and, as ever, in the other’s languid, giddy caresses. They conversed for a time, of horses, of Haldir’s handsome new longbow, of Elladan’s plight, when Legolas had regarded Elrohir with such open heart, such peerless understanding, that the darkling elf was soon defenseless against his longing. Here was his husband, his forever-mate, if not yet in name then in deed, in his relentless support. 

It had begun, then, and now raced towards completion, Elrohir willingly sheathing the archer’s bruising bucks, Legolas’ eyes streaming from joy, from disbelief. The somnolent forest swallowed the last of their fevered moans, as both came to rasping, ferocious completion. 

Bliss-drunk and swooning, Legolas burrowed into Elrohir’s blanketing arms, unable to dam his tearful eyes. 

“You must always regard me so,” he implored the peredhel. “With such… such…”

“Always,” Elrohir vowed.

“It thrills me,” Legolas added by way of explanation, as if one was needed. “Your eyes… I cannot think that you so esteem me, yet I cannot turn from their worshipful gaze. Especially when…”

“When embedded in my entrails?” Elrohir teased him, hoping to lighten his mood after such delicious exertions. Though he himself felt them deeply, he knew them as an overture, a taste of moments, of meetings to come. An eternity’s worth of blithe indulgence. 

“Aye, *then*,” Legolas chuckled at himself, pressing his baking cheek into the elf-knight’s collar. “Do you think Lord Elrond will find us out?” 

“How could he?” 

“When we face each other, at our binding, he may know,” Legolas noted. “Or across the meal table… or at negotiations…or in passing, in the corridor, the library, the stables…” 

“Ada does have a way of reading the soul,” Elrohir agreed. “Though I think he read yours the very minute of your arrival here. It was plain to me the instant you removed your cloak, at Corseth.” 

“Took you long enough to mark me,” Legolas retorted playfully, unable to resist stealing away another kiss. Their lips lingered, reluctant as ever to part. “Will you return to questing, melethron, when we are bound?”

“In time,” Elrohir responded thoughtfully. “As, I expect, you will be required in Mirkwood.” 

“Aye,” Legolas grunted, unwilling to consider thought of his homeland in such a moment. “Celeborn, in his letter, claimed some other strange devising for Ada’s court. I need not return for a few years, perhaps as long as twenty.”

“Shall we make a pact, then, to remain at Imladris for that time?” Elrohir inquired, the idea most entirely satisfactory to him. “Together, to solidify our binding.” 

“Well planned,” Legolas assented. “May I venture another point to our agreement? That we do not remain apart for over a year, unless by some matter of the gravest importance to our peoples or an act of nature’s force prevent us. And we must spend at the very least seven of every ten year together, whether in Mirkwood, here in Rivendell, or in the wilds.” 

“Eight of ten,” Elrohir insisted. 

“We are princes,” Legolas mused. “That is perhaps too generous a commitment, in the coming times of war.”

“I care not,” was Elrohir’s bold reply. “I would not a day be parted from you, if the times granted such luxury.” 

“Nor I, you, nin ind,” Legolas whispered to him, taking a deeper kiss from his ready lips. “Were that it may be so.” After a pensive moment, he was decided. “Eight, then.” 

“Nine,” came the mischievous opposition. When Legolas could not be goaded, Elrohir turned to lighter matters. “Tell me, meleth, would you also wish to be somewhat… secluded, after our binding? There is a small cottage Ada keeps at the summit of the mountain, in the thick of the birchwood and near a weak waterfall. We could, perhaps, spend a month or two there? We need only descend every fortnight, for supplies, and even less in the company of your swift longbow and slit-knives.”

“Very well, indeed,” Legolas answered, impressed by this foresight. “To speak of luxury!! Alone with my dearest one, our hearth, horses, cascade, and forest as playground, no orcs to slay or fathers to tame down… have we passed on to Valinor?”

“Consider it a taste of what’s to come across the sea,” Elrohir promised. “When Arda is free of Shadow once more.” 

“I’ll consider more than a mere taste of you, lirimaer,” Legolas purred against his neck. “When we are two atop the mountain with nothing but the wind to chide us.” 

Sparked by this suggestion, Elrohir promptly stroked a curious hand down the length of his sleek back, cupping his lower cheek. 

“Why tarry on this… point, meleth,” he murmured suggestively. “With such a fair afternoon stretched out before us and not a chore’s distraction?”

Legolas, his smile brimming with potential, brought their soft mouths together. 

* * *

With a cunning feint, a spin, and a whip-smart swipe of his dulled practice blade, Elladan traced his dagger-tip across Haldir’s slender throat, winning the day. 

Cacophonous applause erupted from the punch-drunk nobles surrounding the training ground, as the elf-warrior released his hold on his fair opponent and the two soldiers bowed to their admirers. In celebration of his elder son’s binding later that evening, as well as to occupy the swelling numbers that had journeyed to Rivendell for the event, Elrond had organized an exhibition of swordsman’s skills, where any game warrior might challenge another, for sport. The Lord of Imladris was himself counted among the spectators, along with the two hallowed grooms, Lord Celeborn, the Lady Evenstar, and Legolas’ imperious brothers, ostensibly on leave from Mirkwood for a ‘diplomatic mission’. 

Oddly satisfied with the outcome of their contention, or perhaps merely to conceal his embarrassment, Haldir clapped an arm around Elladan’s back and guided him towards a nearby table of refreshments, as his broadsword-bearing brother Orophin and triton-wielding Lindir took stage behind them. Elladan’s weight crushed against the valiant Galadhrim, who he found required his full support merely to depart the ground. Struggling to conceal the faint wheeze to his belabored breaths, he allowed Haldir to navigate through the crowd of well-wishers, until Erestor welcomed him to the table with a goblet of spiked water. Elladan downed the fizzy liquid, then silently demanded another, the last of his corralled energies sapped by his bold exertions. 

For the better part of a week the dissimulation had held strong, Erestor’s potent tonics giving temporary, yet false, strength to listless limbs, atrophying muscles, and scattered, brainless focus. Elladan drank his full of these strange concoctions, trusting the caring Loremaster to see him through to his twin’s binding and a day beyond, when he would depart with the star-crossed pair for the mountain peak, they to their rest-cottage and he… he to his final rest. On the journey, he would forewarn Legolas of what his father would learn in the early hours of that morning, so that his beloved brother might be cocooned by his new husband at the severance of their shared spirits. Foretelling Elrohir would have been an impossible feat; the sight of his devastation might cause Elladan to reconsider, thus he chose Legolas to bear this burden. 

Elladan himself had borne enough for one lifetime. 

Despite this looming fate, the constant fatigue of this vital deception, the elf-warrior felt an odd, becoming liberation since his heavy choice. Moments of family reunion were effortlessly cherished, the sanctuary of the forest hollows held new appeal, even the most practical exchanges gained import with him. His observations of his peers, his nearest, the soldiers in his charge, became more acute, when his own intentions were removed. Most vividly, his nightmares had ceased altogether: not even the Black Riders could breech the stronghold borders of Imladris and, soon, an attack would be futile. They could not take his soul. 

For the first time in two hundred years, Elladan tasted true freedom. 

Only when Glorfindel was near did the flavor somewhat bitter. 

“Are you suitably replenished?” Erestor asked guardedly, breaking his reverie. The Loremaster could do little to mask his temple-pinching concern. 

“Aye, though I shall rest some before the midday meal,” Elladan responded, his face worryingly gaunt. “A bath, perhaps, will warm me.” Suddenly, he remembered Haldir, arm still clenched around his waist. “A pleasure, as always, to best you, my able Galadhrim. You fought with great honor, Haldir.” 

“Yet I remain conquered,” he sniffed bemusedly at his old friend. “With no suitable chance of revenge.” 

“As it should be,” Elladan twinkled, though Erestor got caught up in the unspoken implications. 

Haldir, remarking his husband’s pain-shroud visage, switched to holding the troubled Loremaster. At this, Elladan smiled softly. His weary gaze drifted over the gathering, noting his father wagering with Celeborn, Arwen ever-demur at his side. Further on, Elrohir and Legolas lazed on a low ederwood bow, eyes intent on the match but limbs so tightly wound, the most hardened seafarer could not detach them. Even Glorfindel, amid the border-guards, cheered with their vociferous ranks, at times for one fighter, then for the other. /They are well, now. They will be well, after, with such able hearts for consolation./ 

Elladan pocketed a tiny sack of the replenishing powder and nodded his thanks to the tender couple before him, then wandered away from the training ground, towards the eastern wing of the Homely House, careful that none note his retreat. If he knew Caellan, the devoted housemother of Imladris oft mistaken for a soothsayer, a steaming, loam-strewn bath awaited him beyond his chamber doors. As he skipped up the weathered stone staircase, long ago carved into the hill’s steep incline, a pair of haggard cobalt eyes broke from the playful bout and marked him. 

Later, after a long, blissful soak and brief but bountiful sleep, he rose from his lounging chair with renewed vigor. In a few hours, all of Imladris would gather in the Hall of Fire, where Elrohir and Legolas would be bound. That morning, before the makeshift tournament had begun, he had aided Elrohir in selecting his garments, had kept with tradition by plaiting his hair. The ebony locks, plied with honeyflax, had been easily tamed, Elrohir’s eagerness less so. As his sarong-clad legs loped over to the wardrobe, Elladan was lost in the memory of this, of his own binding-day confessions to absent Elrohir, already preoccupied with the mercurial elfling Legolas.

Then, as if by some fateful mischief, he was startled by Glorfindel, waiting in his armchair for recognition. 

“You appear quite well,” the guard-captain noted, as if surprised to find him so able. “Are you wholly recovered, or does some pain linger?” 

Suddenly conscious only of his bare chest and skimpy silk sheath, Elladan delayed his reply in search of a robe. Those blunt, red-rimmed eyes, ever-rapt, bruising, unnerved him. He found a loose shirt, tugged it on. He returned to Glorfindel’s hard stare, now tinged with a cutting despondency, as if he longed to slit his hunting blade from toe-tip to obsidian crown, or throttle him barehanded, or banish him from existence altogether. Elladan had thought long on Glorfindel’s suffering during this last fortnight of recovery; the evidence before him aided no conclusion. He could only act in keeping with his own conciliatory desires, and so, he padded towards the lounging-chair, urged his wrought husband to join him. When he refused, Elladan nodded sagely, then reclined himself along the velvet cushion. 

“How do *you* fare, nin bellas?” the prince delicately inquired. 

Glorfindel couldn’t discern whether the inquiry itself, or the endeared term accompanying it, struck deeper. 

“I am as ever,” he tersely answered. “I do not wish to trouble you, I merely came to-“

“I am not troubled,” Elladan demurred, with an air of genuine repose. “I hoped we might speak, before the ceremony began. Better in private than later, observed.” 

“Aye,” Glorfindel acknowledged, seeming to temper. Silence fell, as if the area around the guard-captain had been curtained off. 

“Why have you come?” Elladan ventured gently. 

Glorfindel’s glare became vacant, as if unseeing, yet seeing all too sharply, as well. He opened his mouth to speak, but not a word followed. He sighed, a look of such encumbrance, such forlorn exaggeration weighing upon his lush features that Elladan momentarily thought him drunk. He lowered his foggy eyes, his earlier flintshod attitude smote to ashen shame. 

“I know not,” he murmured to his feet. 

“I thought on you, the other morn,” Elladan remarked, taking pity. “I took a turn with Legolas, wishing to show him Elrohir’s old ale-haunts. Which, of course, I well knew would unmoor my brother later, when the journey would be so innocently recounted, at the evening meal, but…” He paused when the corners of Glorfindel’s lips twitched, then pressed on. “I recalled a day before our majority, when we were first given leave to travel unsupervised into Barrowman’s Close. Elrohir and I were so emboldened by this new freedom, we marched straight into the ale-hall and demanded a pint of their foul brew.” Glorfindel, seizing the memory, dared a smirk, his head raised to listen. Elladan, caught there, indulged in a chuckle. “Little did we know the effect such gruel has on elfkind. We were legless after but a few sips! Staggering down the lane, heads spinning, the liquor loosening the stop between our twinness, so we were doubly hit.” 

“At least,” Glorfindel added, a hint of mirth in his tone. “The pair of you had the sense to hide.” 

“Which only the more enraged Ada,” Elladan countered. “But you found us, Glorfindel, and brought us home. Nursed me all night, I was so horribly sick! Remained at my side until morn, without rest… or regret, I imagine.” Gentled eyes met his, this retreat into the familiar drawing him out. “You loved me, then. I have not forgotten.” 

Glorfindel swallowed, dry, then rasped: “Nor have I.” 

“It was privilege to be so loved, so doted upon,” Elladan continued, as he rose to seating. “My accusations these last years have been… disrespectful, to those times before. I have held, with little merit, to what you would not provide as my husband, Glorfindel… but not to what you have always given me. Your patience. Your knowledge. Your wisdom, protection, guidance, support… A true guardian’s love.” 

On impulse, he crossed the distance between them, then knelt penitently, cupping humbled palms over the guard-captain’s set knees. Glorfindel tensed, as if under assault, but restrained himself from pulling entirely back. Elladan’s mithril eyes shone, pure as a mine’s molten core, and he found he could not look away. 

“I love you,” his husband declared in a hush, ever bashful. “I was so embroiled by my own concerns, I neglected to consider your own. To remember how you had always loved me. Thus… Glorfindel, I would be reconciled. Let us not greet Legolas and Elrohir into their binding with false hearts… if you would our togetherness be chaste, but with some gentle affections, I… as long as we are, indeed, together...” /Even for some short while; for a night, only…/ 

In the face of such blitheness, from one often so brash, Glorfindel blanched. Here, again, before him, was the young elf long in his charge, naively pleading for a scrap of comfort from one who had so diligently wronged him from the very moment of their joining. This hurt, blameless beauty now begged him for pardon, *him*, for a measure of peace. He’d finally broken his fierce, wilding colt, tamed him down to simpering with absence and ire. The thought nearly sickened him to grief. 

“Aye,” he whispered, in solemn agreement. “As you wish.” 

Elladan’s eyes narrowed, suspect. 

“I thought this might please you,” he commented, wondering. 

“I am…” he began, but could not continue. Instead, he recalled the matter that had first brought him forth. “Erestor has told me that you will part, in the morn, with Legolas and Elrohir?” 

“I will go to Gwallach’s Shelf,” he explained, disturbed by Glorfindel’s persistent gloom. “Set camp awhile, among the conifers. Reflect.”

“Upon?” he asked. 

Elladan searched for his answer, holding Glorfindel’s questioning gaze a moment too long for overt honesty. He settled on a half-truth: “My years in Arda. My questing… our people. Those I have known, those I have loved.” 

“To what aim?” Glorfindel inquired more insistently, his anxiety mounting. 

Elladan began to speak, but found that he, in turn, could not fathom an appropriate response. 

Thoroughly unsettled, Glorfindel returned to his opening query: “Are you well, Elladan?” 

“I am as you see me,” came the halting reply. 

Glorfindel sank back into the armchair, the realization like a lead blanket spread over him. Elladan seemed equally anchored, but by fear. Never one to deceive; honest, at times, to a fault, his brutally tamed colt was now muzzled by his own burnished honor and reined down by obligation. Glorfindel could not bear the proud, winsome stare that bore into him, but could not allow himself to look away. /Here is proof of your wretchedness, of your despoiling. Face it, cur, and know it as the bastard child of your weakness./ 

“How long?” he dared ask. 

“Days,” Elladan told him, stark as stone. 

“Is there nothing…?” he attempted, the words almost voiceless. “No potion…? No draught…?”

Elladan considered this, then remarked pointedly: “There is but one remedy.” 

The prince rose, then, and returned to his wardrobe. As he laid out his tunic, breeches, fetched his boots, his grandfather’s sword, Glorfindel sat, still. He stared blankly at the sea green flagstones of the tile, as Elladan dressed, as he brushed out his hair, portioned out his braids, as he wove them. Only then, seconds before the final horsehair circlet was positioned and clasped, did he rise. He approached from behind; Elladan relinquished the circlet for his husband’s fastening. 

Their mournful gazes met in the mirror. 

“We are reconciled,” Glorfindel confirmed, after snapping the clasp closed. He back away a step, then offered his arm. 

Elladan stood to his full height, and accepted him. 

 

End of Part Six


	7. Bound

Part Seven

Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 2,718

Under the ethereal light of his valorous father Earendil, Elrond surveyed the binding feast with a pregnant heart. 

Stealing a moment alone with his thoughts on the terrace of the resplendent banquet hall, the Lord of Imladris’ noble features took on a serenity rarely witnessed since Celebrian’s passing to Valinor. His comely face pearled in the argent beams of the silmaril, his sage gray eyes took little note of the ensorcelled woods beyond the crescent-shaped balcony, as they were fixed on the revelers inside. 

As their gathered friends crowded the dancefloor, Legolas and Elrohir held near-surreptitious court by the hearth, tucked into the twin-cushioned armchair the elf-knight had once shared with his brother. Though Elrohir was entranced by the billowing flames and Legolas was engrossed in Orophin’s battle re-enactments, the couple was entirely and utterly together. Elrohir lazed against his husband’s lank frame while contemplating the fire, their arms linked, the roots of their fingers indiscernible, they were so entwined. Although characteristically animated in his intermittent remarks to Orophin, the archer’s every gesture in conversation was completed by a squeeze, a caress, a gentle touch to his dark beauty’s person, ever-concerned that Elrohir’s quiet reflection not turn maudlin. 

This insight into his new partner’s tendencies was great comfort to the once-anxious father, a sign of the depth of Legolas’ commitment to, and understanding of, his ever-tempered son. Elrohir, though far from cowardly, often allowed himself to be led in action: by his father and tutors in his youth, by Elladan after their majority – it was his nature to defer, to comply, when not embroiled in lengthy council negotiations. That he was the same in matters of love little surprised Elrond, though this same quality had no doubt long ago caused him to win Legolas’ heart, through patient, considerate wooing. Now that the bold prince of Mirkwood had bloomed into a sterling maturity, Elrond believed he would take the lead in their relationship, offering peerless, intent affection in return for Elrohir’s unwavering support and blithe regard. 

As Orophin took his leave to find out Haldir, Legolas welcomed Elladan to their side. In this, as well, the archer proved his intuitive skills. Knowing Elladan had long cared for Elrohir’s more gentle heart and would chafe somewhat at his binding, Legolas had made a point of including Elladan in some of their private moments. His need to befriend his fellow guardsman was effortlessly genuine, since the two warriors had, on the surface, more in common than the bound couple. Legolas, however, wasn’t blind to Elladan’s vital role in the shaping of Elrohir’s self-image; the Mirkwood prince was too shrewd a marksman not to realize that such a changing-of-the-guard would viscerally affect both Elrohir and his twin, thus, as the truest lover would, he sought to ease the transition for both brothers. 

Elrond currently observed one such finely-balanced transaction, as Legolas, after a tender kiss for his somnambulant husband, eased away to refresh their goblets, offering Elladan his seat in his stead. Elladan, clearly grateful, received an equally affectionate slap on his back before Legolas’ departure. Snuggled as tight as two scheming elflings, his twins bunkered quickly down and hastily shared their secrets, complicit as ever. 

“Precocious as they day they were born,” Glorfindel remarked, suddenly a pale, startling apparition at his side. 

“Incorrigible,” Elrond agreed, leaning back on the railing to include his friend. “May they always remain so.” 

“Legolas is shrewd,” Glorfindel went on. “Do you mark how he lingers near enough to keep them protected from interlopers, but far enough to allow them some peaceful time?”

“Aye,” Elrond nodded, curious as to Glorfindel’s intent with such keen observations. “They are expertly matched, if this joyous day allows me some self-satisfaction.” 

“Indeed,” the guard-captain smirked, well-aware of Elrond’s sporadic prideful indulgences. “Though I fear Thranduil’s reaction.” 

“Legolas, no doubt, will weather it as all other things,” Elrond commented wryly. “With his mother’s graceful resolve.” 

The two shared a hearty chuckle at a shared remembrance of the Mirkwood queen’s tempering of her husband’s renown will, the only creature in Arda, save her youngest son, who could manage such an awesome feat. Glorfindel’s laughs, however, soon grew somewhat forced. Elrond, feigning diplomatic restraint, took a moment to better examine his newly-creased features: once crisp lines withered, eyes rimmed scarlet, jaw clenched, yet formless. His cloudy, cobalt eyes fixed on Elladan, whose unnatural color his own skin mirrored, though no sickness had plagued him for centuries. Elrond grew pensive, wondering at the time’s rightness. He uncrossed his arms to appear less severe, less judgmental, then exhaled with measured precision. 

“Before their raucous begetting,” he began. “I thought long on paternity. Celebrian and I deliberately delayed our children’s conception, we feared the world too unstable for elflings. Even before they were born, I was wrecked with a father’s protective instincts. How may I keep them safe? Away from the Shadow’s claw? From danger? From the threat of war, perhaps even between elven tribes? When they reached their majority, that ever-encroaching fear took on a different shade: how can I ensure that the one they bind their lives to will cherish them as I have, will keep safe their hearts and form an honest, fulfilling partnership with them? As I look upon them now, grown, gracious, and magnificent as they are, it gives me no end of heart-warmth to know this has come to pass. That they have chosen well, and rightly, for their mates.” 

Glorfindel’s soft protest went unspoken, as guilt braised him through. Elrond furtively took note of his discomfort, then shifted his tone.

“Elladan looks particularly well,” the Elf Lord proceeded on. “This injury has siphoned some of his more corrosive fury at his mother’s… undoing. I feel he has at last discovered some measure of temperance, though I hope some remnants of his tenacious nature linger on. This is perhaps merely a father’s jaded compliment, but, in many ways, I feel his potential for greatness is as stunning, as ardent as that of Gil-galad himself. Though he is my second-born… if the necessity struck, I would name him my heir and Elrohir as his seneschal. I’ve often thought the Valar knew of Elrohir’s even-handedness, and sent Elladan along to shield him from life’s crueler lessons. I mean no disrespect, of course, to my dearest star-rider… but, when Elladan’s wisdom comes of age, there will be none to better him.”

“Aye,” Glorfindel muttered. He dared not withdraw his rapt stare from the twin-seat, lest the proud father mark its winsomeness. 

“Such stubbornness, even in his youth, yet always such bravery,” Elrond praised. “I often knew not what to make of his relentless will. Do you recall our first hunting trip, when he insisted on bearing his own bow and broadsword, only to later slay an oxboar twice his size!! Then, at his majority, when you so suddenly departed, he would not hear word of comfort or slander against you, though his heart heaved with pain for years after. It was he who saved Celebrian from the orc-nest, and he who bore Elrohir on his back the entire road home, as she rode their only horse. When we debated your binding, I offered to speak at his behest, but he would hear none of it. ‘I would not have a formal union. I have no need of another father,’ he insisted, to his merit.” The pointed intent of this latest arrow struck the unguarded Glorfindel dead-true. Still, formality held that he not speak against his Lord. “Even on this last bout of questing, after years of torment, his bravery held fast against the Shadow. Before they were forced to flee, Elladan stood tall on the hillside and summoned the Nazgul to him, goading them, fearless though they preyed on him alone. He would have taken the nine of them on, had Elrohir not begged him down.” 

“You know the toll of it, then,” Glorfindel stated dully, when Elrond fell silent once more. 

“I am Lord of this Last Homely House,” Elrond snipped, though without menace. “Two hundred years of estrangement does not go on without my notice. Do you judge me so easily deceived?!”

“It was not my intention to decei-“

“I care not for your intentions,” the Elf-Lord reprimanded, then sought a moment’s composure. “Or your excuses, of which I have heard little, so beloved are you by your companions. They would not speak a word against you, even in this grave matter.” He turned towards his guard-captain, demanding his unwavering attention as only such a compassionate ruler could. Glorfindel obliged, waiting for the axe to drop. “One last remembrance, and my tale is told. Receive it as you will. On the eve of your binding, plagued by the expected nerves, Elladan came to me for comfort. I told him, then, of my error on his first begetting day, the accident that led to your overabundance of feeling for him. I explained that your regard sprang from this well, and perhaps no other source.” 

Glorfindel, struck dumb but desperate, demanded: “What did he reply, Elrond?”

“He considered the matter for but an instant,” Elrond explained. “Perhaps more for my satisfaction than of his own indecision. But, in the end… he cared not. Indeed, it seemed only to solidify his resolve to love you well, and quite thoroughly, as if to justify my error as preordained by the Valar. He sought only to deserve this happy accident, the mentor that always was, and would forever be, bound to him.” 

His trenchant stare retreating indoors, Glorfindel attempted to reckon this news with his cold behavior. He found he could not; that, faced with a father’s heartfelt confession and his husband’s rashly chosen fate, he could no longer cower from the decision before him. To live boldly, and in bliss, or to sacrifice the one he held dear, by whichever cause, for the sake of withered, misguided honor. 

In that moment, he knew he would suffer Sauron’s most unforgiving wrath, if only for a minute of Elladan’s care. 

He turned to thank his life-long friend, but found Elrond had disappeared. When he re-entered the banquet hall, Elladan had also taken his leave of the festivities, though a studied Legolas thought him simply retired to his chambers, for some rest. 

As if the Nazgul themselves were on his heels, Glorfindel flew after him.

* * *

Somberly, Elladan regarded himself in the elegant, pewter-framed mirror. Rarely did the elf-warrior consider these florid features as his own, or bother to contemplate them beyond mere utility: the evenness of his braids, the cleanliness of his teeth, the tone of his skin when feverish. The courtly face now reflected had always belonged to his dearest Elrohir. Elladan himself thought any primping so base he never linked the righteous elf in the looking glass with his known self, a prodigious, arrow-swift, and horrifically able soldier. 

As the stark, gray eyes of this hollow elf bore into him, not a glint of his brother’s harmonious face was apparent, his sallow cheeks, over-emphatic lips, and frail jaw-line barely an echo of the elf-knight’s stately grace. The severance of their twin souls completed by Elrohir’s binding, Elladan, for the first time in all of his existence, felt a savage isolation claw his chest, scavenging for the last of him. He’d shroud his innermost self, this last, vital week, in a veil of peaceful resolve, in order to properly engage those he held dear, without fear, without thought of his passing, without regret. 

Nobly, he had judged; but the ghost in the mirror told another tale, one of abandonment, of merciless dread, of love unrequited and crudely reformed. These latest hours on Glorfindel’s arm had little served their intended truce, instead reviving two centuries worth of resentment, dissatisfaction, and ache unbound. The scornful elf under his rapt eyes seemed as rapacious as a starved falcon, but Elladan felt like a carcass, bones long ago picked clean of meat. Though he’d not dared admit to it, the most secret part of him had clung to some dim hope of salvation, even up until the ceremony itself. That the rapturous aura that surrounded Legolas and Elrohir would engulf Glorfindel’s misguided virtue and, caught in their heady swoon, he would see true.

Elladan, however, was evidently the bedazzled one; deluded by his very life’s blood into cherishing one unintended for his most tender regard. His love-culled sickness was merely a manifestation of the wretchedness of his purpose, to woo the one heart which would ever-elude him, the one soul never meant to be claimed. Glorfindel was right to cite his passage to Mandos as the barrier that held them aloft; perhaps, if he had lived beyond his Balrog-slaying, through the millennia to the present day, then they would be joined, and blissful. In this, Shadow had warped the Valar’s pure intent. Thus, when the resurrected Lord of the Golden Flower consumed the very matter of his intended’s making, the seed there planted was poisoned at the root. When later their budding marriage went unconsumed, the Nazgul were sent to reap of the rot Shadow had sown. Only another, more vital link saved him so long from falling; his bountiful twin, now plucked from their common vine. 

Even hope’s ever-bloom could not survive this bleak winter.

Elladan released the horsehair clasp that held his braids, unwound their sheer, obsidian lengths, careful to remove the two winds of leather from hallowed Tuor’s scabbard. These he employed as sash for the thin scroll of parchment before him: a final word to Glorfindel. He might have gifted them to Legolas, as valorous as a throng of Tuors in his estimation, but his usage had cursed them. Instead, they would return to whom they had originally been given, in lieu of a lover’s embrace. Perhaps Tuor, and not Sauron, was the Shadow looming over their contentment; Elladan held few doubts on this other matter. The parchment rolled and secured, he positioned the scroll on his night table, then allowed one last glance at the forlorn elf in the mirror.

A trick of the mind, surely, was reflected there; not he.

Behind, a familiar, welcome form peered through the doorway.

“Have you become so self-enamored that you would leave our wager unmet?” Erestor teased from the study. The first maneuver of his Battle Game was deployed across the desk, awaiting the elf-warrior’s challenge. 

Elladan secreted away his melancholy, then rebuked: “If I were so easily distracted as you yourself commonly are, I would be glad my trouncing be delayed by a moment’s vanity and seek not to waste valuable time for strategy with belabored, if witty, interruption.” Feeling more himself, the darkling elf rose, then moved to join his fondly-held Loremaster. 

“Such confidence!” Erestor snorted. “It will be your undoing.” 

“Not as fitting an end, perhaps, as on the morrow,” Elladan shrewdly retorted, indulging in an overdramatic air of resignation. “But far more reasonably explained to our Lord Elrond.” 

“Aye, at that,” the Loremaster sighed, growing fearfully accustomed to his bouts of dark humor. “Though my own end might grow nearer, as a result.” 

“Indeed,” Elladan noted, poised to give the matter *careful* thought. “A small price, what say you?” 

At this, Erestor dangerously sobered. “One I’d pay gladly, if given the chance.” 

Elladan exhaled longly, gathered his esteemed Loremaster near. “We need not rally, if you would rather converse. Perhaps we should summon Haldir, and Orophin, some distraction…” 

“Would you be glad of their company?” Erestor asked, anxious to please. 

“In truth…” Elladan began, but knew not his own mind. Though their presence would hearten him, such companions would only underscore those absent by necessity: his Ada, Arwen, Legolas, Elrohir… even Glorfindel. /Especially Glorfindel./ “I know not, Erestor. I would not burden them.” 

“They need not be burdened,” he insisted, hoping to dispel the fugue of loneliness clouding around the prince. “The game will be enlivened by their skill.” When Elladan became mired in inner-reasoning, Erestor again drew him close. “I think you disregard, perhaps intentionally, the effect your passing will have on this Homely House, on Arda entire. You will be at peace, true, but for those far away, those who will never know the reason of your chosen fate… and even those who will… none will truly comprehend why such a brave, honest spirit could be so carelessly allowed to pass, undefended. As, I confess… I do not. I will never understand it, nor will I seek to, though my vow to you is sealed and kept dear.” 

“We should begin,” Elladan commented, hearing his words but unable to properly digest them. /Perhaps, on the hill, I will recall them, and be heartened./ “I would go soon to Ada, and stay the night at his side.” 

“And I would not forgo a chance at long-deserved revenge,” Erestor agreed, having made his last stand. 

When they were poised to sit, an urgent knock sounded. 

“Come,” Elladan called, almost eager, hoping Elrohir sought a final word before his bedding. 

He struggled to temper his sparked nerves, when Glorfindel swept in. 

Both elves instinctively strode towards the other, as if a message of vital importance had arrived. Erestor felt his stomach cinch when he spied the stormy blue of Glorfindel’s widened eyes, locked intently on expectant, yet fortified, Elladan. 

“Here you are,” the guard-captain mused, relief washing over him at the sight of Elladan, safe and well. “Such a sudden departure-“

“-I was fatigued.“

“Are you well?”

“Well enough,” Elladan assured him reluctantly. “You need not concern-“

“-I am concerned,” Glorfindel barked, unsure of how to proceed in this crucial business. “Your affairs, your well-being, have never ceased to concern me, El-“

“Cease your whinging,” Elladan commanded, as if to his lieutenant. “State your cause.” The lonely prince glared at Glorfindel, his exasperation plain. “I would have no trouble from you, on this of any night.”

Chastened by this blunt reprimand, momentum lost, the Noldor questioned softly: “Am I but trouble to you, then?”

“I meant no quarrel,” Elladan snapped, his patience flown. “Do I hold no claim to peace, even now? May I not pass without issue, or abasement? Does the sacrifice of my life’s flame not meet your price, Balrog-slayer, or would you have my mind and mirth, as well?!” 

The elf-warrior’s harsh words stabbed into the thick of Glorfindel’s resolve, his skill in verbal sparring as lethally acute as his swordsmanship. Barred from explanation, both by Elladan’s order and by the faultless stone of his eyes, the guard-captain abandoned any planned delicacies, engaging the dauntless prince in the full-throttle assault that bested the fiery Balrog. 

“I like the sweet cream of your reason, your frothy mirth too well to part with,” Glorfindel remarked, though he kept his temper. “Even for a drop of your sour wit.” 

“Yet part with them you must, at dawn,” Elladan morosely reminded him. 

“I defy such forced necessity,” he shot back, crystalline eyes flaring with the volcanic blue of his soul’s resurrected flame. “No natural force in Arda or aloft in the heavens would dare bind my rogue spirit, not the Firstborn, nor the wind, nor the needs of this blithe sanctuary, this Homely House. Not the only death known to elfkind, nor the all-hallowed Valar above. Only you, Elladan. Only you can claim me.” He knelt, then, at the baffled, sorrow-gripped prince’s feet, deferring to his will. “I am, as ever, yours to command.” 

“Why have you come?!” Elladan demanded, too brittle to stand even the stench of further heartache. His eyes, sharp and keen as Rohirric spikes, warned the Balrog-slayer back. 

Instead, Glorfindel rose anew, closed the distance between them. “For you, melethron. For your heart, at long last…” Before Elladan could utter a squeak in protest, Glorfindel wove willful arms around him and pressed a brash, decisive kiss into his stunned mouth. 

Erestor, swallowing an unsightly cheer, snatched the nearby key, snuck out into the corridor, and bolted the door behind him. /My Lord Elrond’s healing arts are unmatched, even by blessed Valinor./ 

Elladan’s body, hard with shock, rigidly self-protected, loosed and sank further into the guard-captain’s rapt hold. The fervent kiss turned supple, giving, as both pairs of lips lingered, reluctant to part, to distance and therefore be forced into required confrontation. Resolution. They did, however, ease back; though Elladan, fearful, overwhelmed, gave eager chase. He inundated Glorfindel’s lips, chin, cheeks with thick, willing kisses, breathtaking in their sweetness, their breathlessness beckoning him forth. Unable to long resist, Glorfindel curled his fingers through the sheets of raven hair and took his mouth, relentless, unbound. 

When Glorfindel slid lissome, affectionate indexes over the downy peaks of his ears, Elladan struggled to stifle a raw, ready moan. 

“Now,” he pleaded to his reawakened husband. “It must be now. Now, or never again.” 

“At your order, husband,” Glorfindel smirked, knowing the time for fluttery nothings and reverent indulgence had long past. Elladan would that his soul be ferociously revived; not completely without artfulness, but with unyielding ardor. The guard-captain, roused beyond his oft-caging reason, would dutifully comply. 

Bliss-drunk, they staggered over to the prince’s turned-down bed, lips and arms engaged as if in combat, neither desiring other than to further entangle themselves. Both fought, fumbled to unlace the other’s cloying formal garments as they held their bruising embrace; in the end, Glorfindel tore off his own tunic in maddening frustration, his muscle-ripped chest and wrung nipples waiting far too long on Elladan’s lush lips. As these were peerlessly attended to by the giddy prince, Glorfindel yanked off boots, unlaced both their tenting breeches, then, leagues beyond restraint, slipped lust-quaking fingers below Elladan’s slick navel and palmed him. 

Unlike the sword-ready Balrog slayer, Elladan, weakened by his sickness, had been slow to fully deploy. This mere clutch rushed his simmering blood to an aching boil, his hot seed surging through his now-ready engorgement. His parched mouth, savaged crimson, began to pant with need, dissatisfied with the hard planes of chest, the slight buds of nipple, wanting thick, moist, tart. The elf-warrior collapsed onto his knees and peeled down Glorfindel’s open breeches. Glowing mithril eyes fixed on the elegant ivory shaft revealed to him, as broad and sterling as an elephant’s tusk. Hungry lips, a famished tongue teased the pearly length, until its veins purpled fat and its head glistened with an unctuous white fluid, soon lapped clean. Its second bud was just as fiendishly devoured, as was its successor, the rabid mouth now milking small, controlled spurts from the taut shaft, but not the decadent soak it sought. 

At his edge, Glorfindel grabbed his tormentor by the scruff of the neck and wrenched him to his feet, his aquamarine eyes flaring, wild with want. His kiss hit like a blow to the face, buckling the elf-warrior’s knees and shoving him back onto the rough embroidery of the coverlet. He crushed their sweat-slick bodies together, dangerously undone, then ground their hips, their tight-swollen erections in a riotous, break-neck rhythm, one only a rider of Elladan’s relentless skill could dare match. The soldier-prince matched it, bettered it, quicksilver eyes locked on luminous Glorfindel, his passion, now unleashed, a glorious, ravaging ecstasy, the sight of sights for a lover to behold. 

Their concurrent release, though awesome and volatile, gasping and wrecking, came fast. Glorfindel, shame-sick in the thunder’s wake, gripped into Elladan’s scarlet-flush flesh and sobbed out his heart. Elladan, engulfed in the heady flow of their reunited soul flames, curled lazy, comforting arms around him, but could not stifle a smile. 

Both soon found sleep, sheathed in the other’s snug embrace.

* * * 

Echoes of his brother’s resonant reconnection rippled the undulating streams of feeling flooding through Elrohir’s heightened senses, as if a pebble tossed into the Bruinen. Though their twinness had ebbed to a sparse trickle, their spirits still flowed from the same deep-bedded river. When the rites of mature life had divided its furious course, their common wellspring continued to ease them through the rapids. Thus, as Elladan sank into the somnambulant bath of satiation, Elrohir felt his twin’s long-earned serenity wash over him.

Sprawled across the satiny lilac sheets of his marriage bed, the darkling elf raised his head, his placid gray eyes to the smoldering hearth not ten paces away. There stood his new husband, haloed by the fireglow, the sheer flax of his cornsilk hair taking on the rich, golden hue of the vaporous flame tips. Clad in a sarong of porous sea-green embroidered with willow bows, the diaphanous fabric wafted over his slender hips, his sinuous thighs, like sheathes of spun birch bark. An archer’s feral grace blessed him, as he thanked his intrusive brother, as he accepted an unexpected letter, as he wished him a fond but resolute goodnight. The same lissome, lethally acute fingers that would soon smooth over his stomach and stripe the willing skin of his back cinched the sturdy Rhovanion parchment, then nimbly untied the double-knotted sash of Mirkwood-silver hue. 

With a studied, defensive smirk, Legolas read his father’s letter. 

Their unmooring visitor gone, Elrohir rose, naked, and was swiftly at his side. Though Luinaelin’s companionship had ably guided Legolas in his formative years, the youngest prince of Mirkwood rarely had overt praise for his eldest brother, Crown Prince Mithbrethil. When both had turned up a week before the ceremony, none had been more surprised than Legolas himself. The poised archer had judged it a fair omen, invited their attendance, but all among the Lords of Imladris had had their reservations. As Legolas perused the scroll’s pointed contents, Elrohir could not help but wonder how long the correspondence had been in Mirthbrethil’s possession, whether Thranduil was so self-besotted as to dare lord over his son’s mind on this, his binding-night. 

After emitting a sigh tinged with worthy bemusement, Legolas tossed his father’s letter into the fire. Elrohir stood behind him, close enough to be sensed, waiting. The fair prince’s contemplative eyes watched the parchment burn, unwavering until the last cinder meshed with log ash, and for some time after. Satisfied, he turned decisively towards the bed, then was struck by the beauteous sight of his bare, bold-framed husband, in full glory before him. 

This vision his keen eyes appraised far longer than the flaming scroll. 

“Elrohir,” he gasped, but could not say more, as his elf-knight came into his arms. 

“What kingly woes did Thranduil’s letter impart?” Elrohir queried, his tongue sharp. “Or did your kindly father write?” 

“Neither,” Legolas told him. “Though I doubt not some fiery tome of disapproval is being transcribed by Selath as we speak.” 

“Who was’t, then?” Elrohir inquired. When Legolas’ eyes cooled, he regretted the intrusion. He was the archer’s husband, not his keeper. “You need not-“

“It matters little,” Legolas assured him. Yet he instinctively tightened their embrace, affectionately resting his brow, his warm cheek against Elrohir’s own. “My mother composed it, before she passed, and charged it to my brother’s keeping.” Elrohir swallowed hard, gripped his dearest one even harder. Both had weathered a mother’s loss in their lifetime; they were brothers in this misery. They had had occasion, in the long-passing weeks, to speak of this common sorrow, only one of the many ties that valorously bound them. 

Unlike Elrohir, Legolas had little memory of his mother’s sweetness or of the attack that caused her grief, though he had often enough wished, as he matured, for her counsel. That it came at the moment of his greatest happiness soured him somewhat, but he was grateful she had thought of him. He had believed, throughout his youth, that she had considered him little, having surrendered to her wounds as she did. Though he knew nothing of their severity, he could not help wonder why she did not cling to his love, to his peerless regard for her, in order to find strength. He doubted any postulated answer could satisfy this tormenting question, in present circumstance or at the fraught time of her death, thus he had long abandoned this particular quest. 

Until it had come courting. 

“Why burn your mother’s words, meleth?” Elrohir asked, before his nose nudged his temple hollow. “Were they so unwelcome?” 

“Unbidden, perhaps, but not unwelcome,” Legolas murmured. “They have their place in my heart.”

“They will be gracious company, there,” Elrohir attempted some mirth. “I vow to keep them well-entertained.” At this, the mercury re-emerged in Legolas’ keen eyes. 

“It does not stress you to accommodate them?” the prince inquired mischievously, lips poised salaciously before his own, for maximum taunt. “You are so very… well-endowed. Such fine meat, I would hate to see it restrained. It must be allowed to unleash itself…”

“On unsuspecting, flaxen-haired archers?” Elrohir chuckled. “By the river, perhaps? Or, no, in the hayloft, after hours? Between the backmost shelves of the library, on Erestor’s meal-break? Or perhaps simply… by the hearthfire in the Healing Halls?” 

Legolas blushed a cloying scarlet, recalling this particularly risky encounter. After a day of forced separation, he’d been so bewitched by Elrohir’s lush countenance that he couldn’t keep himself from pouncing on him, consequences be damned. Dismissive of this heady negligence, Elrond had missed their more riotous coupling by a lark’s call. As it was, the Lord of Imladris had heard his full of their groanings and counseled them to keep their vow-breaking confined to chambers, where the greater populace of the Homely House would miss them. 

Legolas had been so ashamed, he hadn’t touched Elrohir since. 

However, as they again caressed before a hearthfire, memories of that molten encounter began to stir, along with the notion that he had not bedded his beloved, now husband, in three entire days. Elrohir’s fingers had crept beneath the folds of his sarong, slackening their weave, teasing the netted hem over the soft of his thighs. He longed for their knowing, generous strokes, longed to feel their hot clench on his arousal, but also knew they must settle their minds before such peerless indulgence. 

“Elrohir?” he beckoned, his sober tone drawing the elf-knight’s rapt attention. “Do you ever wonder if… if, had such calamity not befallen our Nena…? We would certainly not have been betrothed, or you presence ever required in Mirkwood…” 

Elrohir’s sage eyes quickened to shimmering silver, the intensity of his love so raw, so bare that Legolas couldn’t stifle a heartened exclamation. He recalled the very moment of their binding, when those haunting mithril orbs had bathed him in their blithe regard and their souls had surged forth into one pure flame. Elrohir shushed him with a gentle hand, whose fingers he kissed in lieu of the too-tempting mouth. 

“I am yours, melethron, by the will of the Valar above,” Elrohir implored. “A drop of blood is no heart’s promise, nor could a disloyal elf-king’s schemings keep yours from needing mine. We are princes. Our lives are by design calamity-plagued, whether by those we have known, or others that were intended and failed. But know only this: I would have found you. I would perhaps have wooed with more difficulty, a path similar to worthy Elladan’s, but I would have won you, in the end. On this very day, at this very hour, would we be bound and blissful…? Perhaps not. But would we have known each other? Aye. Would I have loved you at a second’s glance? You know the truth of this, for yourself and on my part. Our hearts have been ever-joined, will *forever* be joined as one. This is our committed path, this is our vow. Do not waste these precious minutes on what may have been…” Elrohir slowly backed away, the fallen sarong trailing after him. 

“I am here,” he whispered, before Legolas hurried to claim the first, sensuous kiss of their lush evening. “I am yours.” 

* * * 

As the blessing light of the silmaril gave way to the peachy blush of Arien’s dawn, Elladan bade goodnight to his vigilant grandfather and silently welcomed the morn. Weary, sleeping Glorfindel still burrowed tight in his arms, after a brief rest Elladan found that no dream could lure him away from the sight of his husband returned, even in penitent slumber. Thus, he’d waited-out the night in admiration of Glorfindel’s scarlet-lidded face, his kiss-bruised lips, fusing their heated palms together when his healing soul-flame waned and murmuring reassurances against a sallow temple when the elder’s nightmares struck. 

After several hours of stillness from the guard-captain, Elladan remembered his seed-slick thighs, the clammy stretch of his abdomen and his tear-salted chest; on this first, crucial morning, he would greet his new lover with freshness. He cautiously extricated himself from the somnambulant elf’s embrace, then ambled over to the wash-basin, bare as the day of his birthing. As he cleansed his cranky limbs, he again had occasion to observe himself in the telling mirror. Though his skin’s length was relit with an opalline shine and his frame recut with slabs of sinuous muscle, he appeared battle-worn: his hips and his thighs braised, his biceps striped with scars, his bottom lip red-swollen. This last only gave his rising smirk a wanton voluptuousness, which would no doubt prove wickedly useful in late-day seductions. Satisfied with both his rejuvenation and his self-refreshment, Elladan anointed himself with yasbrinth balm, tugged on – but neglected to fully lace – his tattered riding breeches, downed a waiting glass of oarberry juice (Erestor, no doubt, had seen to it), then trod out into the rose-tinted mist of the balcony. 

Though Arien’s boldest rays but peaked through the dense forest of the eastern ridge, the air was crisp, bracing. A lush autumn stirred in these late September days, soon the cool emerald forest would unveil its most flattering colors: maize, rust, ochre, vermilion. Elladan was glad of the coming frost, eager for a winter spent breaking the spring-born colts, smithing the patrol’s dulled armor, and tending the stables. Only hours before, he’d forgotten the coming, snow-bound tasks he treasured, thinking this brisk day his last. As he leaned over the carved oak railing of the high balcony, he dared imagine future months spent in familiar tasks, chores both he and Glorfindel relished. In his learning years, they had wiled away many a winter afternoon in the stables, tending to the horses, stocking the armory; Elladan starved rabid by intuitive curiosity and Glorfindel ever-ready with knowledge. Their friendship was forged in these formative years, a friendship oft ignored when love’s shrill cry deafened him to its import. 

Since love’s consummation, Elladan thought of little else than the renewal of this cherished routine, all the sweeter now that emotion underlay shared action. They might pause, for instance, over the expansion plans, to indulge in a caress, confirming their unspoken contentment at a long-desired initiative fulfilled. Despite the endless wars he’d waged and witnessed, Glorfindel had never soldered a broadsword nor restrung a longbow; perhaps Elladan could demonstrate the skills he’d acquired among the roughshod Rohirrim. Indeed, he would be glad to recount any of his travels and was eager to hear of Glorfindel’s own adventuring these long years apart. / I marked not how I have missed his company, as well as his care. /

A lilting whistle sounded from the far gate; the elf-warrior peered across the training fields. There astride two chestnut warmbloods lingered Elrohir and Legolas, moments from overtaking the path to the hilltop cottage. Elladan was surprised they rode with the dawn, their binding-night revels being – he assumed – quite engrossing. However, he knew Elrohir particularly longed for their shared solitude above the Rivendell valley; perhaps they had not bothered to sleep. He shouted a hearty goodspeed to them both, and felt their tender response in the deep of his chest. He, too, sent a surge of warm feeling through their tenuous link, suddenly remorseful at having to wait a two-month to confess his newfound joys to his kindly twin. 

At one with the hallowed sunrise, his heart full to bursting, Elladan felt the sting, both of light and of tears, on his face. 

He would live. 

As they guided their steeds into the valley wilds, Elladan felt a tremulous presence behind him. Their bond mightily reformed, Elladan could sense each of his husband’s myriad emotions: ferocious shame at his past behavior, a grating need for reconnection, his badly scarred pride, dismay at the thought of Elladan’s potential reproach, and - a shadow lurking over these gray moods - needful, soul-gripping love. With uncharacteristic timidity, Glorfindel moved to join him at the rail. Elladan deliberately filled his mind with the glowing remembrances of moments before, thoughts of the future and hopes for their daytime preoccupations this coming winter. He dared not conjure his nighttime wishes, lest Glorfindel turn predictably noble. 

Elladan held little place for gallantry in his bed. 

“The air is sharp,” he commented, when Glorfindel was indeed at his side. “Ada and Lord Celeborn best conclude their summit before the leaves turn, else Lady Galadriel will pass a lonely winter.” 

“It may take all of the fallen season to countermeasure the Mirkwood threat,” the guard-captain remarked. “Arwen rides for Lorien, on the morrow, with most of the Galadhrim. Only Celeborn and Haldir will remain.” 

“Then we best wait-out the springtime with them,” Elladan suggested. “Thranduil may not sleep through the winter, with news of Legolas bound. Though I had not thought to plan otherwise.” 

“As I well recall,” Glorfindel voiced, rather skittishly for one typically so bold. “You had made no plans after… after…” His eyes dipped down into the brush below, the memory clouding his vision. 

“Yet this morning, I am ripe with anticipation,” he beamed, straightening himself and turning his gaze to his hush lover. “Plans, schemes, strategies…is it not strange?” With a soft laugh, Glorfindel raised his head, but waited on Elladan’s overture. None came, worrying him the more. “Will the Mirkwood princes depart soon?” 

“Later, if I’m not mistaken,” Glorfindel ventured, with considerable restraint. “I wonder at the true nature of their acceptance of their brother’s choice.”

“If they are any like my constant brother,” Elladan conjectured. “They’ll hold their tongues, or defend Legolas to the last.” 

“Few are bonded as you and the elf-knight,” the guardian noted. “So named for the peerless valor you both effortlessly display.” Elladan appeared to grow pensive, then flashed a wry glint to his tense, oblivious husband. 

“*I* was named by one of such valor,” Elladan insisted. “His surpasses even that of my noble twin. An elf of such surly devotion, he would rather suffer an eternity’s torment than see me harmed by his loving. But even such a golden elf can mistake needless sacrifice for loyalty. Even he can be spared the pangs of guilt, as I like too well the felicity of loving the one that named me, that reared me, that taught me all my skill and sheltered my foolish heart, in youth, from his boldest desires. The first face I saw, on waking from my Nena’s womb, a sight beckoning me to fully engage this land and its two-edged wonders.” The pools of his silver eyes shimmered with tender resonance. “But now I am grown, Glorfindel, and have at last known your ferocious passion. Melethron, why do you not come to me? Are you so felled by unwarranted shame as to deny yourself the bliss of our reunion?” 

“Would you have me, then?” he inquired, his voice quavering with tenuously held feeling. “I have behaved basely. Even last evening, when I came to be reconciled…”

“I would have died for love of you, Balrog-slayer,” Elladan reminded him, almost playfully. “I would most certainly live for it.” With a look of pure gall, he sat a haunch upon the rail, waiting for Glorfindel to come to him. /If he cannot breech this small distance, then he has not yet truly bested his fear./ 

With a quiet smile, Glorfindel met with him, lacing their arms around one another and brushing a soft, needful kiss over his bite-swollen lips. Elladan cupped his face, deepened their embrace. He carefully slid open his mouth, smoothing in a thick, languorous tongue. Glorfindel shivered, sighed; a sense of heady, blissful completion flowing through him, eradicating the last few knots of tension not burned away by Elladan’s giving kiss. On the previous night, the beauteous prince had known the force of his lust; on this rosy morn, he would know his most loving touch. With considerable reluctance, he pulled back from their rapt caresses, his eyes soliciting Elladan’s sweet attention. The boundless affection reflected in his stunning mithril eyes almost withered his resolve.

“Melethron,” Glorfindel whispered. “Have you ever… known another love?” 

“None as you, lirimaer,” Elladan vowed.

“I need no reassurance, meleth,” he amended. “I do not ask this pridefully. I merely… have you ever coupled in the love of another? Have you been in the love-act’s thrall?” 

“Aye, there were others who momentarily captured my heart, in my travels,” Elladan admitted, then guessed the question’s astonishing reason. “Glorfindel… have you never before coupled in love?” 

“I have not,” he confessed, some bashfulness returning. “I have coupled, for certes, in lust, in loneliness, but never in love. In this, my dearest one… you must be *my* guide.” 

At this news, Elladan could not repress an exclamation of sheer, boundless delight. He grabbed Glorfindel’s by his loose wrists and pulled him away from the rail, towards his chambers, towards their waiting bed, his eagerness infectious. 

“Come, then, melethron-nin,” he beckoned, a wolfish smile spread from ear to leaf-shaped ear. “Come to me, now, and I will learn you the weirding ways of the love-act… But be forewarned. You will shudder, and bay, and keen, and beg for the merest flick of my tongue across your tender thigh. For days after, you will think of nothing else than another taste, another chance at our quickening. You may never recover… and never again wish to be parted from me.” 

“I already wish for this,” Glorfindel replied, indulging in a grin of similar wickedness. “What binding of our bodies could match the song of your gentle heart?” 

“I will show you, my beauty,” Elladan purred, as they slunk through the entranceway. “Come inside.” 

* * * 

The ghostly cast of Earendil’s star loomed over light and shadow in the night’s stillness, purpling the tongues of smoke still fuming from the snuffed hearth, blackening the far, secret corners of the quiet cottage, washing the darkling elf’s skin blue as the river over shallow banks. The lank, limber body lay like a shard of ice before the dead fire, angular limbs tucked in tight, his dormant length sleek as an ivory slit-knife across the bristled warg-pelt. In the moonlight, the sheen of his obsidian hair contrasted with the coarse, ruddy fur, the regal slant of his jaw and the sheer slope of his cheek slashing deep into the hide, as if beauty had indeed slain the beast. 

Elrohir lay naked, unbothered by the rising chill; his skin, though pearly white, warmed from within. Wisps of his peredhil heritage were matted to his slick chest, dark, damp hairs framed his face, his mouth bit thickly red, his phallus slack across his hip; only these told the lusty evening’s tale, these mere traces. Gathered into a drooping ederdown blanket, into himself, on the window seat, Legolas ignored the tranquil night beyond, intent on the bedazzling effect the starlight had on Elrohir’s unique beauty. 

Many times, in his long memory, had he observed the elf-knight in rapt slumber; each occasion marking a particular event in his development. The first night of their reluctant acquaintance in the Healing Hall of Imladris: Elrohir ailing from his near-fatal Nazgul wound and Legolas, but an elfling, threatened by the strange groaning form in the other bed. That same stranger so humorous but days later, snoring beneath the Bruinen-bank willow, under which they would one day be lost in coupling, collapsed from fatigue while ostensibly caring for his infant charge. In Mirkwood years later, from the sanctuary of his own talan terrace, peering down at the alluring new visitor asleep on his chaise-longue, in his own sky-lit talan, Legolas caught in the mire of confounding infatuation. Later then, on the night of his undoing, waking to the feel of his new lover over him, to the sight of his taker revisiting their loving in his dreams. Just months ago he’d guarded his vital sleep by their campfire, fresh from the black riders’ chase and needful of replenishment; Legolas himself in need of some sedative drought, so vociferous was his racing heart at their recent reunion after centuries of separation. Weeks later, under that recurring willow, content and thoroughly sated by their lovemaking; every single night since. 

Every night since, and every night for the foreseeable future… the momentous matter of his fraught waking just minutes before being that Elrond had, indeed, seen the future, and shared some of Legolas’ part with him, the afternoon of his binding. A handful of peaceful centuries awaited them, tasks at home, questing in the field, togetherness as long sworn beneath the ever-present willow. A time, however, would shortly come; a time when the Shadow’s reach would spread like a plague across Arda and when each elf would be forced to chose his allegiance: to Middle-Earth or to Valinor. 

Their most potent soothsayers, Elrond and Galadriel, knew not the outcome of the final battle; only the actions, the choices, the valor of those chosen to lead the charge would decide their beloved land’s ultimate fate. Legolas, whose near-miraculous birth heralded his destiny, would be among those chosen, but no path is certain. Should he remain with Elrohir, should he cling to his husband’s skirts, the leaders may fail in their task, but he and Elrohir might escape to Valinor, together. If he depart with the chosen few, with one of mighty heart but not yet born, Arda may be saved. None knew if Legolas would survive the war, so closely nested was he with this kingly savior; Elrohir’s survival, though naught was ever guaranteed in forecasting, was strongly predicted, as his fate was ever-twined with Elladan’s. 

On this night, Earendil’s star haunted their humble cottage; with his sallow light came visions of Gondolin’s fall to Legolas’ dreams, vivid reproductions of the kinslayings, of the later war against the Shadow, where the Ring of power passed to men’s weakness and Gil-galad the elven king fell. The volumes of history he had perused these last months, waiting to be bound, had returned to him in this honeyed time; the tales denied him by his arrogant father’s obsession with the tools of past wars and not their crucial lessons. Upon his return, he must further learn from Imladris’ ample library, must insist Elrohir teach him of their people’s wrong-sightedness. Only then would he know the path of his choosing, only then could he fight without fear of loosing the one he cherished most dear. For, since their binding, this fear gripped him as never before, dagger-sharp terror cutting to his very core, that the master-archer would miss his shot, that the most vicious knife-wielder would be cut down, that despite his every effort, his every hope for victory, he would err in carelessness and be slain. Elrohir widowed before his time, cursed by an eternity of longing in Valinor. For now he knew the ardor of his husband’s plentiful heart, knew its sole, unwavering purpose: to love him for the rest of his days. Nothing, not death, not Mandos, not some twinkly power-ring, would keep his constant elf-knight from that vowed quest. 

Greatest of all in this, Legolas feared his own weakness, his own kept, devout heart, that longed to follow in this historic charge, whose mettle longed to be tested by the intemperate hand of this promised destiny. Was it weakness to abandon Elrohir with fate as gross comfort, or to escape from these troubles to Valinor with their love intact? Would he be able to leave Arda to ruin, the land he loved nearly well as his mate? Could he leave Elrohir to months of worry, of scorn, of regret, after only a few centuries of marriage, for callow adventure? 

Legolas wrenched his eyes from the beauteous sight of his somnambulant beloved, forced them up with the stars, to the sky. Though hundreds of years waited his choice, he felt the decision’s weight as acutely as the day he’d cement it with a proffered bow. /Peerless Earendil, light my way. Bless me with the guidance that has led your hallowed kin to their heart’s joy, know me now as one of your honored lineage and help me accept the path the Valar has seen by my birth…/ 

“You’ve gone cold, meleth,” Elrohir chided, sneaking in behind him and covering them both with the fallen blanket. 

The darkling elf wrapped himself around his golden one, sinuous arms, lank legs, then hugged to his back, aquiline nose nudging the edge of his pointed ear in the chaste kiss of the puritan Avari elf-tribe – or so Elrohir had oft been heard to drunkenly argue to a scoffing maid at Barrowman’s Close, in his rambling youth. Grinning at this giddy recollection, he replaced his nose-tip with a cunning tongue, cool-steamed breath wafting after. The gambit was usually the first in Legolas’ tortuous undoing, but the archer showed no sign of arousal, his gaze fixed, pleading, in the heavens. 

“Legolas?” Elrohir gently summoned him back. 

The Mirkwood prince blinked, twice, came back into the present with a heavy sigh. He leaned back into his husband’s steady arms, allowing their tender sanctuary to hearten him. Elrohir, though eager to comply to this unspoken request, studied him, silent. In the seven days they’d been so happily sequestered here, not a false or discordant note had been struck between them. They’d rode, hiked, swam, conversed, mock-dueled, and ravenously coupled, some often simultaneously, without argument or incident. Even the matter of their absent mothers had been chewed out and suitably resolved, Legolas fervently offering his most painful remembrances for the solace of Elrohir’s healing words. His estrangement from this new sorrow greatly concerned him, as not a trace of its existence had reared this last, blissful week together. 

Thankfully, the archer himself plunged into the thick of the matter. 

“My apologies, melethron,” he excused himself. “I did not wish to exclude you…”

“Save your explanations for what troubles you, my brave one,” Elrohir whispered away. “What new agony could possibly shadow your constant heart, now that we are bound?” 

“The woes of Arda,” he told him. “The Shadow’s ever-steady rise over our fair land, and the winds of war that blow along behind.” Legolas bunkered down, rested his head on the elf-knight’s chest. “I am young, Elrohir, begot with one purpose.”

“A new charge against the Shadow,” the darkling elf commented, without emotion. “I knew this before I knew you, meleth. What of it?”

“Has your Ada spoke to you of… of his visions? Of my foreseen destiny?” he asked tensely.

“Often, and quite thoroughly, Legolas,” he noted. “Ada would not have me blindly bound. Indeed, this was the very reason for our betrothal, so that I might steady your course, guide you to the ready path, and hold you tight to resolution. Support you, in your charge, from afar. I have always known of your predicted… your participation, in the final battle. I was bound to you in hope that our union might tip the odds in favor of your survival.” 

“And if I wish to guarantee my immortality?” Legolas insisted. “If I chose… another path…”

It was Elrohir’s turn for a mighty sigh, as he fell eerily pensive a good, long while.

“I would caution you against this,” Elrohir finally murmured. “But I know not how. If you say, when the time is upon us, that our love’s continuation is of ultimate import… that you would not part from me, no matter what the cost…”

“I know it now, Elrohir,” Legolas vowed intently. “I would pay the price in dear Virgor’s foals, if I must, in forests or cousins or entire mines of mithril. I would not part from you, no matter what the cost, to Arda or to our people here.”

Elrohir bowed his head, only to face a mouthful of fragrant, flaxen hair. 

“I would not part with *you*, lirimaer,” he near-sobbed. “But what if this, your choice, is what leads our love to bitter, in Valinor’s hollow splendor? What if the only way to ensure our eternal happiness and contentment there, is to fight, is to part, is to win the war… and to reunite in the aftermath and be fulfilled by the salvation of our land and our wintering people?” 

“You have needled the very thorn in my side, Elrohir!” he mused, bereft. “Each night, after our most impassioned coupling, I have thought on this… been haunted by this very tormenting question. What if. *What if*. We cannot vow on supposition.” 

“Then we must trust in our betters,” Elrohir counseled. “In the very protectors who saw us joined, against all odds, against our kindred’s angry history, against our death-hardened hearts, against easy infatuation, against your maddening father… against the creeping Shadow. We must trust in the Valar’s will, which we yet know not. Which will be illuminated to us both, in time.” 

“Cursed time,” Legolas grunted, but was calmed by his reasoning. 

“The time for cursing will indeed come forth,” Elrohir remarked. “But the time allotted to us for bliss, this is at hand. I would not spend it in fear of things to come.” 

“Well judged, my dearest one,” Legolas conceded. “Nor would I.” 

“Then cast away this cloying darkness, maltaren-nin,” the darkling elf rasped suggestively, as he urged them both to stand. “And come to bed. My wilding ways will tend to your bewildered soul, I promise you.” 

“I doubt you not,” Legolas dared a mirthful smirk, but quickly sobered. “My mind would welcome such heady distractions… but… may we not converse awhile? Tell me more of your exploits, with Elladan, in youth… or of your pillaging of Lorien, with Haldir…or of Arwen’s lovers…” A thought struck him. “Has Arwen had lovers?” 

“To speak of a fraught destiny!” Elrohir shook his head. He gathered Legolas close, allowed his fair archer a lingering kiss, full of another, more dizzying promise. He pressed their warm bodies together, felt them both begin to stir: hope was ever-constant, where their love was concerned. “Come then, melethron. I will hold you dearly and tell you tales of woe and wonderment, for your comfort, as on the night when first we met, in the Healing Hall…” 

“Must we exchange blood, as well?” Legolas teased, as he let himself be led into their bedroom. 

“Blood? No,” Elrohir considered mischievously. “Though you may yet have some draught to quench me…” 

* * *

Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 2,719

From the stable-stalls below their makeshift chamber, Virgor’s comely mate, Leiliva, mewled in voluble discomfort. 

Above him, Elladan’s own primitive baying echoed the horse’s intensity, but none of her pain. Indeed, as he ardently impaled himself on Glorfindel’s wrought shaft – hips bucking wildly, meaty muscles flexed, streaming from fevered exertion, skin flushed rose-raw, he seemed to relish in his own feral groans, every jolt to his sweet core eliciting a charge of blinding pleasure. Glorfindel, nearly joy-sick with keening pleasure himself, basked in his young husband’s thorough undoing; though, when Elladan’s fearsome quicksilver eyes bore into him, they left little doubt as to whom held the reins in their furious riding. Grabbing the thick of Elladan’s hard-swollen erection and thrusting deep into his devastating heat, Glorfindel thought to finish them both before serious injury was incurred. 

The elf-warrior, as was increasingly customary these last months, had taken him without balm or aid, later savoring the ache of his internal bruises. He wore them as a hunter his most prized pelt, as a dragon-slayer’s neck was adorned with the creature’s teeth and claws, as spoils of valorous war. In times of uncertainty of purpose at the strategy table among the Elf-Lords, Glorfindel had lately observed his lover lean back in his seat and slide his hips beneath forward, applying pressure to his love-scars, the nail-stripes on his flanks, for confidence in this field of inexperience. His eyes would then darken to storm-cloud gray, but the pain roused him, remembered him his courage. Even Celeborn himself could not object to his subsequent arguments, the elders often struggled to justify themselves in the wake of the elf-warrior’s knowing observations. Glorfindel liked to believe his sage counsel, as well as their insatiable physical indulgences, had had effect on his dearest mate, but this little flattered Elladan’s own experience on the battlefield. 

In the months since their clumsy reunion, the prince had proved to be, in all things, his equal; a partner of multiple, monstrous skill. The elf-warrior had had the somnambulant winter he so craved at their reunion. Both partners occupied themselves with gradual modifications to the stables and the armory, infrequent attendance at council meetings, occasional patrols, and much horse-rearing. They came to cherish their quiet routine: morning exercises on the training field, early afternoon chores, late day strolls through the snow-swept woods, evening merriments, and rapturous nights. To Glorfindel’s continual astonishment, Elladan never tired of his companionship, instead mourning the short time they need spend apart; though Elrohir’s company was especially welcome by his brother and the twins kept regular hours in secret, impish conversation in the high hayloft. In Elladan’s brave soul, Glorfindel had found a kindred flame. Never before could he share a warrior’s frustrations with another of similar mettle, pride reigned supreme in matters of honor. A husband’s heart, however, kept every shame-clogged confidence secure; when cocooned together in their most protected intimacy, Glorfindel could confess his past shortcomings to one of experience and of ample understanding. 

This quickly became a comfort no other could hope to match. 

As Elladan raced them towards quaking completion, Glorfindel distanced his mind from their mad grinding to gaze up at his glorious husband. He had passed centuries repressing himself, never daring to truly look upon him, upon the lush, ebony beauty that broke him. His was the body of a warrior, but the face of a king. His blitheness defied his roughshod adventurer’s soul; his beauty was ether, and mist, was of Ithil and of bounteous Elbereth, even in fault, or uncertainty, or hast-quickened anger. Elladan’s gallantry was not forced as some, but he liked his resilience too well. His was a fragile, needful heart, which he often secreted away from those he regarded most fondly. Glorfindel, however, had at last found him out; this quest had yielded treasures such as he had never thought to know. 

The hot, sudden wash of seed across his abdomen woke him back, as Elladan howled out his release. His body surged, wrecked, and his passion coursed from him, coursed through him, raging, visceral, immaculate. Elladan coughed, once, then collapsed against him, woozy, laughing with delight. 

Below, the fat-bellied mare groaned anew. 

“She is ripe for birthing,” Glorfindel remarked, his collar stuck with slick strands of raven hair. “Tonight, perhaps?”

“She will wait until I am sated,” Elladan grinned mischievously, giddy with crippling desire. “You are ever mine, melethron. I will have you again.” 

“Again?!” Glorfindel protested, but not whole-heartedly. 

“Do not feign indignation, Balrog-slayer,” Elladan mirthfully accused, sucking fitfully at his mouth. “I have long held claim over your ragged heart. You are at my mercy.” 

“This I do not protest,” he murmured. “But that does not oblige you to be merciless, limiraer. Think of my age…”

“You are more limber than I!” Elladan snorted, stifling a ready smile. 

Before the golden elf could summon a playful retort, his husband pressed a gentle kiss to his red lips, full of rich affection, of his most secret sweetness. The prince lingered on this sensuous, needful caress, still eager to prove even their most relentless coupling heartfelt. After a solemn retreat, his mithril eyes turned a gleaming argent in the lone candle’s glow; Glorfindel could not resist their rapt, tender gaze.

“You have my love, most dear husband,” Elladan vowed, his earnestness almost too sharp to bear. “You *are* my love, Glorfindel.”

“I know it well, melethron,” he replied, with equal fervor. “I know not why, after all that has passed between us; I know not how you can forgive my many millennia of ignorance… But I have sworn not to squander another second of our togetherness, and I will not waste it now on doubt or regret. Not when my precious love lies here, in my arms. Not when his eyes flare with desire, and he would love me with all of his bold, beauteous self.” 

“I do,” Elladan whispered. “I would…”

“Then have me now, for I would be yours, over, again,” Glorfindel beckoned him, his azure eyes light with abject reverence. “I would be yours, forever.” 

With a sigh, Elladan lowered tear-heavy lids, and sunk into their kiss.

 

The End


End file.
